


All the Kings Horses & All the Kings Men

by Ladyboo



Series: Darlin' and the Doctor [5]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: #1 asshole Khan, Angst, At this point I feel like Sasiss should come with her own warning tag, Author taking liberty of characters ages, BAMF Jim, Chris adopted Jim, Demisexual Character, Eating Disorder, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fuckit im using Khan, Hurt/Comfort, Im the author and ill do it if i want to damnit, Ive got a thing for Chris being Jims dad, Jim adopted Kevin and Thomas, Kidnapping, M/M, Mental Illness, Mild Bulimia Nervosa, Mpreg universe, Original Character(s), PTSD, Past Sexual Abuse, Sexual Assault, Slice of Life, Slow Updates, Warning: Sasiss, Which is mainly bc of science but hey, intern!Bones, kind of academy au, single dad Jim, spock and jim bromance, sue me, tarsus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-04 00:16:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 41,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4119693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladyboo/pseuds/Ladyboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a single dad of two at nineteen is hard, and Jim knew this. However, he liked to think that he did a fairly good job of it, even with all of their collective PTSD and trauma issues combined. And well, if he decided he wanted to date his son's doctor while he was at it, Leonard wasn't actually their doctor, he was just the doctor's intern, so no one could really judge him. Except, there was this man, who had galaxies for eyes and a smile sharp as any razor had ever been, and Jim didn't get it, didn't understand the mans insistence, his fascination. But the man called him George, and that-that wasn't right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, the Spock and Jim fic is done, there will be follow-up oneshots at some point. And I haven't updated Bang Bang like I'm supposed to, because I was rather insistent on starting this gem, that's been sitting on my computer since...well a few months now? I enjoy it, and my Beta rather enjoyed it too, so I hope all of you beautiful people like it, because honestly I'm pretty enthused with what I plan to do for this, and I can't wait to see what you all say!  
> Comment as you will, and ask questions if you need them too!

The dim display of the digital clock beside his bed said that it was five forty-eight in the morning… and all Jim knew was that Kevin wouldn’t stop crying.

He'd had a double the day before, with a shift that had started less than twenty minutes after his classes had let out, and Jim had pumped his legs extra hard to make that mile in record time.  He’d managed though, with his pack slapping against his back and his shirt damp with sweat.  His boss had glanced at him, little more than a look down her nose, before she’d dismissed him with a sniff and a wave.  Finally, Jim had gotten off at eight and had made it home by eight-thirty; too tired to run and far too unlucky to ever think about hitching a lift… and the boys had been done with bath time, ready for bed.  He owed Sasiss a bottle of Talaxian champagne; a good vintage, if he could find it.

Taking a deep breath, Jim pushed himself up from the comfort of his mattress, rolling over to stand almost before his feet even hit the ground.  Walking in an instant, one hand scrubbed over his eyes to try and chase away the sleep, the other doing a check to ensure that yes, he did indeed have pants on.  Just like that, he was off, one foot in front of the other as he stumbled out into the hall, bumping against a wall as he went.

To his right, a bedroom door creaked open, and the swirling galaxy lights from a nightlight bled into the hall.

“Daddy?”

Reaching out on instinct, his fingers scratched through the soft brown strands of the six year old’s hair, reassuring himself that the boy was there and safe.

“Hey, Tommy, go back to bed.”

Instead of replying right away, his son just smacked his lips quietly on a yawn, watching Jim through his dark lashes.  One little fist reached up, rubbing at his eyes, while the other scrubbed at his belly. Despite his own fatigue, Jim gave a small smile at the sight, fingers gentle in his hair.

“Is Kev okay?”

“He just had a bad dream.  I’m going to go get him now.”

A quiet hum fell from the boy’s throat and his eyes slipped down the hall to where Kevin’s room was, before sliding back.

“He gonna’ sleep in your room?”

Sighing, Jim fell silent for a few seconds, tilting his head to listen to the sounds of Kevin’s crying.  Heavy, wrenching sounds, they were cries that came from the little boys belly, full bodied things that would wrack his entire frame.  He’d be exhausted, by the end of it, and no doubt so sore that he’d need a heat pad in the morning, to make him feel better.

“Get _Skolek_ for me, Germ.”

Tommy ducked back into his room with a nod, the door creaking as he went, and Jim carried on down the hall with a muffled yawn.

Kevin’s room was usually awash with soft lights of green and blue, gentle things that lulled the boy to sleep and kept the monsters at bay.  Now though, the room was in darkness and so a fuse must have blown, unnoticed in the dark of the house.  Lips pulling down into a frown, Jim sighed and his fingers found the bed, bathed in a soft beam of light that filtered in through the window.  Just a bit of pressure, and that little body rolled toward him and latched on almost instantly.

Kevin's face was blotchy, with red-white skin and mucus that dribbled from his nose.  In the dimness, his green eyes were red rimmed, his ginger hair sleek with sweat, and there would be another wash before sleep came, it seemed.  Carefully, Jim gathered him close, little three year old hands scrambling at his arms, his shoulders, and short nails catching on the skin of his bare chest.  

Kevin's sticky wet face pressed against the slope of his neck, and the boy gave a muffled sob.

"Shh.  C'mon Bug, none of that now."  

Turning them, Jim lifted the boy up until he was cradled against his chest, free to cling as he chose.  Bouncing on the balls of his feet, he rocked them from side to side in a gentle sway, skin growing wet from snot and tears.  One hand hooked under the curve of Kevin's rear, supporting his slight weight, while the other rested on the back of his head, fingers gentle against his tangled ginger locks. "You're safe and _nothing's_ going to get you."

"Da-Daddy!"

Turning his head, Jim pressed his mouth against Kevin's head in a long kiss, and he exhaled past the clench of tight emotion in his chest.  Kevin's fingers scrambled for purchase asthe bony knobs of his knees dug into Jim's hips, and every sobbing breath his little lungs exhaled brushed fire hot against Jim's skin.

"I'm right here, Bug, Daddy's got you."

The child’s entire body shuddered, the baby fat that he'd just managed to regain quivering, and Jim sighed quietly. They would need to be careful in the morning, and he would need to warn Sasiss: Kevin wouldn't want to eat much for the next few days after this.  Nearly three years, now, and every nightmare still set them back without fail.

Shifting Kevin's weight, Jim hefted the boy up in his arms, holding him higher so he could cuddle against him.  Carefully, he snatched the purple octopus patterned blanket off the sheets -a gift from Grandpa that never strayed far from Kevin's side- and maneuvered the two of them out into the hall.  Kevin’s wrenching sobs were already giving way to shuddering hiccups.  Smoothing a hand slowly over his back to counter the jerking, Jim nudged the bathroom door open with his hip. The lights turned on automatically, rising gradually, and he took a few seconds to orientate himself while he settled Kevin to sit on the sink.   ~~~~

“Hold the edge of the sink on either side of your legs, Bug.”

His breathing wheezy, Kevin stared at him with wide green eyes and a wobbling mouth, but the blanket obediently fell to the ground.  “I’m dizzy, Daddy.”

“I know, Bug.  I gotcha though, just hold tight.”

Touch gentle, he washed from hip to foot with practiced care, cleaning and wiggling the rag between small toes, just to watch Kevin squirm and giggle.

“All better now?” 

Eyes wide, the little boy shook his head, and his fingers tightened on Jim’s shoulders.  Extending his arm, Jim braced a hand on the middle of his son’s back, extra support for when he swayed.  “My head’s sticky, too.”

“You’re right! Do you want to wash it now?  Want me to just run the water through it?”

“Mhm.”

Nodding, pulling the toddler back a bit, Jim started the tap, adjusting it until the water ran at a comfortable temperature. From there he eased Kevin forward, and kept a steady grip when his son ducked his head below the stream to scrub for only a moment before the work was done.

 “Pull-ups or undies?”

Little lips pressing together, Kevin took his time with his answer. There was hesitation in his voice, when he finally made his decision, his small words soft and unsure…  

“Undies.”

The closet next to the bathroom offered him what he might need; Jim reached into the dark depths to pat at the water-absorbing underwear.  The sea creature pattern on the front of them looked mutated in the darkness of the house, and the fabric crinkled under his fingers.  He made a show of reminding the young child where they were, before he ducked into the laundry room to grab a fresh pair of undies. He handed them to Kevin and watched as the boy took a tight hold on them while he turned on his heel, toting both his son and the supply back to his own bedroom.

“There’s nothing wrong with if you _had_ needed a pull-ups, okay Bug? They’re called _accidents_ for a reason, and-?”

“And that’s why Daddy gets me pull-ups.”

“And hey, when was the last time we had to use them? Hmm?”

Lips pushing up into a shy smile, Kevin ducked his head, and the stretch of his lips was felt against the skin of Jim’s throat.

“Not since Tommy’s birthday!”

“That’s almost a whole year!”

Another kiss to Kevin’s head, and then Jim dropped the boy onto the open space in the bed, making quick work of wiggling the little cartoon insect covered underpants up his son’s legs.  Wide eyed, Tommy stared back at them from where he’d huddled himself under the covers and behind a monstrous excuse for a stuffed animal that barely fit in the cradle of his arms. The six year old held the creature, _Skolek_ , in waiting but ready to surrender it up to his brother, instead.  Clapping his hands then, watching as his children wrapped themselves around one another, Jim let out a puff of air.

“All set, guys?”

Both boys stared back at him and Jim didn’t bother to try and ignore the coil of emotion in his chest.  Smiling at them, a soft expression that was nearly lost in the darkness of the room, he watched the way that Kevin ducked his head beneath his brother’s chin, fingers finding _Skolek_ to grasp onto, while Tommy made grabby hands at him. Scratching at his stomach, shaking his head, Jim crawled into bed beside them, arms going out to hold them when they both rolled toward him.

-

Childish shrieks of laughter filtered in from the back yard, through the wide open windows of the kitchen.  Long and familiar sharp shadows, thrown from the eggshell white and twilight gray Queen Anne style house, stretched across the backyard and crawled at the tall Tulip trees and fire bushes that littered the fenced in area. The air that blew in from the open windows was cool; crisp from the shade and sharp with the scent of salt from the ocean a few blocks away.  

Hands braced on the countertop, head bowed, Jim let the sounds of his sons’ enjoyment wash over him. His body ached from a long night in advanced college lectures that no nineteen year old should sit through willingly, and too much time spent curled over books, scribbling down notes with eyes that could barely see straight. Bent as he was, body arched, most of his weight rested on the cool counter, and Jim sighed, letting himself relax in the safety of his childhood home.

“Rough night, Kid?”

Grunting, tilting his head until he could stare at his Dad, Jim watched with tired blue eyes as the other man slipped into the kitchen, bringing the soft sunshine in with him from the outside world, where the children played.

“Finals start in a few weeks.”

As if that explained it all and perhaps it did, if the way Chris winced meant anything.  Shaking his head sharply, the older man puffed and his fingers curled through Jim’s hair as he passed.  Following the touch, Jim tilted himself back in a sharp, swaying arch. The motion of his body pulled a laugh from the other man while Jim’s fingers gripped the edge of the counter, nearly the only thing holding him up as Jim tried to follow the touch in his hair.

The soothing scratching morphed into a sharp swat then, and Chris pushed his son away to pull a beer out of the fridge, mirth in his eyes and laughter on his lips.

“Cracking down hard?”

“The fuckers all think they’re the only teacher you have, even though they know I have four other classes in the week. They _know,_ Dad!”

Sympathy pulled at the muscles in Chris’ face, pushing his mouth down and softening the skin around his eyes, and the man took a long drag from his beer to cover his sigh.  It didn’t do much to muffle the sound though, and Jim let out a quiet sound in response, shaking his head.  He would have thought of the sigh as a sign of disappointment, if he didn’t know his Dad so well.  Mouth opening, his words were swallowed under the call from outside, and both men went wide eyed.

“Daddy, what’s a ‘fucker’?”

Sputtering into his beer, Chris pressed a hand to his mouth to try and stop the dark brown liquid that threatened to spill from between his lips.   Jim pushed himself up, hands bracing on the counter as he hefted himself up and into the window frame. Out in the yard, Kevin lay on his back, half in and out of the shade with his little body jerking for breath. There was laughter floating on his breath though, and sunshine in his hair, and the sight of him enjoying himself was far less frightening than the shit eating grin on Tommy’s face. 

 “Nothing, Thomas!” 

Behind him, Chris was still laughing, wasn’t doing anything to try and smother the noise, and Jim swung around once the boys had gone back to playing.  One finger out, he waggled it at his father in the same way it had always been done to him, and watched with a frustrated expression as his dad simply laughed harder.  Outrage and embarrassment colored his features, as Jim flushed sharply in the warm sunlight that filtered into the kitchen.

“Don’t you _dare_!” 

“You just taught a six year old how to say ‘ _fucker’_ , James!  I don’t know how you expect me to _not_!”

It didn’t matter that he was a father of two young children and that he lived independently.  It held no bearing that he worked thirty hours a week in a coffee shop that he couldn’t stand, nor that he put himself through college with the money that he got from that job.  His trust fund money didn’t matter, not until he was twenty-six anyway, the meaty stipend that he and the boys received from Starfleet as payment for damages done used to keep a roof over their heads; the boys in a good school.

He looked fondly at Chris, at his face contorted in laughter and the beer balanced precariously in his hand; at sunlight dancing through the open windows, leaving golden streaks across the floor.  A soft breeze danced through the antique lace curtains that had been there when he was seven and he thought it was the best thing ever, to tangle himself in their ends where they dragged the floor. The stairs with the stained wood banister were the same ones he had fallen down too many times to count and the doorjamb of the upstairs bathroom still held dash marks and dates for his height as a child; those memories didn’t belong to just him though, not anymore, not with the little dash marks in colored marker at the base that had started just over a year ago.

He was a grown man now, grown enough to have children of his own; responsibilities, and more memories and nightmares on his shoulders than any person should have to carry. In that moment though, he was nothing more than the teenager his ID card proved him to be: he was at the tender age between barely legal and able to drink, with wide eyes and a whine to his voice.

“Oh my God! Dad!”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took me a bit, we've had hellacious flooding, and I'm a mechanic, so it hasnt been a good time at work in the slightest.  
> I hope that everyone enjoys this, but I know that that isnt going to be the case. That said, I apologize if something that I write isnt to your liking, thought I do endeavor with the hope that people do enjoy the things I write.  
> Oh well, anyway, to all of you that like the way this story has started, here you go my beautiful lovies! Another chapter, brought to you by me and my beta's insistence!  
> Tell me what you think?

_He’d stopped feeling his hunger the day before._

_His stomach just felt hollow, instead, an empty shell of a thing that sat low in his torso; an acid-pit that had taken to devouring his insides.  Such hunger that it gnawed at him, ate at him like_ _he wished he could eat something, and he could hardly even feel it anymore, really. If he tried hard enough, he could pretend it didn’t exist._

_Small hands pawed at his face, and bright blue eyes opened, jarred by the stark sunlight overhead._

_Whimpering cries filled his ears, soft sounds that were muffled, under-water things, and they pulled at him. The little face that hovered above him only blocked out half of the light, with wide brown eyes and skin stained with dirt, blood.  Chapped lips moved, a dry looking tongue peeked out to wet them, but he couldn’t hear the words, sounds far too disjointed in his head._

_There was a delay, as if someone was speaking to him through a long tunnel, while the echo made it impossible to understand fully what was going on. But that was one of the children, only a fraction of the horde that he had taken with him, the infants and pre-teens that he had no choice but_ _to rescue. Hungry brown eyes in a gaunt face, the little boy was speaking to him, but Jim couldn’t hear his words past the rush in his own ears, the pounding of his tired heart._

_Bravery didn’t suit him, coward that he was._

-

Brown eyes wide, Tommy clutched the magazine in his grasp with enough strength in his small fingers that the pages crinkled, and Jim sighed.

Fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, he closed his eyes for a moment, long enough to call on his patience in a practiced manner.  A deep breath, the air just as sharp and stale as the previous one had been, and he held it for a moment before cracking his eyes back open. Tommy still stood there though, wide eyed and pleading, and Jim fought the urge to scowl.

"Thomas."

His tone was a warning, unveiled and obvious to the child in the way that only his children ever understood.

"Daddy lookit, though!"

The magazine trembled, either from the force that held it or from the way that Tommy shook his arms, trying to get Jim's attention with the page he could already see. Either way, the glossy picture was thrust before his face, and Jim did his best to look past the image at his son. Wild eyed and intent, Tommy seemed focused on forcing the issue.

Glancing down, Jim snatched the magazine from his oldest kid’s fingers, clean of dirt for once, and held it prisoner while Tommy danced from foot to foot.

“What am I looking at?”

He actually knew _exactly_ what he was looking at; knew that the face of the synthoplast model would be just as smooth and flawless as it looked in the crisp, glossy pages before him. The bright, brilliant colors; the seamless silver and the red and blue lights that flickered in real life; yes, he knew exactly what the replica would look like, how heavy it would feel in his hands and the parameters of the box that it would come in.  At the same time, Jim knew what the thrum of the _Yorktown_ itself felt like under his feet; how the reverb of its engines felt like drums within his bones, the recycled air cool and stale on his desiccated, underfed skin.

He didn’t feel the need to get his children a replica of the ship they had been saved by.

Tommy though, with his wide brown eyes and his wild expression, Tommy just didn’t know the difference.  A ship was a ship, and every ‘Fleet ship was just as marvelous as the next, as far as the six year old was concerned. Each one a passing fascination, they were shining things, larger than life, and he’d been on one once before in his short life.

That hadn’t stopped him from waving the open magazine around with such obvious _want_ on his little features though. “It’s a working model of the _Yorktown_ , Daddy!  It makes all the sounds, and has phaser cannons!”

Because that was, _obviously,_ just what they needed in the house.

Glancing down at the magazine where it now lay, on the table, he waggled a finger at Tommy when he tried to go for it, and gently cuffed Kevin on the back of the head when the child made a move on it himself.

“Ah, what are the rules?”

Just like that, the impish fire sucked itself out of the both of them, hiding in place of something else, something more serious for a change.  He could hear the sounds of their breathing, the quiet murmurs they made, more to one another than to him.

“If he’s not allowed to have it, I’m not either.”

Words whispered in quiet sync in the clinics air, Jim gave a slow nod, gaze flitting between the boys.

“Exactly. That means no _Yorktown_ for either of you _._ Capiche?”

Neither child looked happy with him then, brown and green eyes both narrowed on him like he had committed some great travesty of justice and in a way he had, really, denying them something so great, so majestic.  Jim refused to have a fully operating model of a starship in his home though, not when his children were so small, and that was completely logical for every reason that was his own; a reason that it seemed only he himself could understand. The _Yorktown_ was a beautiful ship, pristine in the way that crafts of her year were, but he could still smell the blood, the rotting and the ash, and even a model of that ship would surely be too much.

The boys were practically babies; they didn’t need starships yet.  Granted, that was real rich, coming from him.

“Capiche.”

There were whines in both their voices, but the boys answered him in tandem and Jim just grinned. Such petulant little sounds, and it was impossible to not feel a little amused by the way that the two of them sagged.  In response, he reached out, fingers ruffling their hair, one at a time.

"None of that now. Tell me, what's Uncle Spock promised to get you, next time he visits _ko'mekh-il_ and _sa'mekh'al_ on Vulcan?”

In the bright light of the clinics waiting room his children suddenly seemed more vibrant, with their sunshine smiles and their chubby cheeks flushing. Their voices were louder than most adults would have tolerated, but indoor etiquette be damned: his sons were allowed to be excitable.

"A real Skolek!"

Their voices were nothing more than excited squeals and, from across the lobby, the receptionist found it appropriate to glare at them. Her forked tongues clucked in her mouth, her sharp black eyes narrowed, and the disapproval on her face was obvious.  Jim just stared at her though, unashamed and unafraid, because _fuck_ her propriety.

"Exactly, and which would you rather have?  ‘Skolek’, or a model of the _Yorktown_?"

It was a serious question, and he could see that in their small faces as they thought it over.  Heavy thoughts with heavy answers as such things held the utmost importance in a child's mind.  Really, it was reassuring to see them so intent over something so trivial, and Jim let out a quiet sigh.

"Mr. Kirk?"

At the other end of the lobby, a familiar voice sounded, and Jim pulled himself up and out of his chair. Grasping Kevin, he swung the boy up to rest against his hip, where he readily clung, and Tommy clambered to his own feet in response.  Doing a quick check to make sure nothing wasforgotten; he turned just in time to watch his eldest hurry toward the familiar nurse.

“Miss Carol!”

There was a grin on her face, friendly as ever, and the blonde woman bent slightly to put her face closer to the child.

“Hey, Tommy! You been giving your Daddy trouble?”

It was the same routine every time, yet Thomas still reared back, as if the  idea would be unthinkable, nefarious even, and Jim would have believed him, would have assumed the boy was an angel… but he knew him too well.  He knew Tommy’s temper as well as he knew his sass, and he knew his boy’s answer to the question before Tommy could even open his mouth.

“Never!”

“Always, don’t let him lie to you.”

A pout touched the child's face then with Jim’s words and, once close enough, he just scrubbed his fingers through his son’s hair, feeling Kevin’s giggles against his throat.  The smile Carol gave him in response was worth it, and he watched as she tilted her head for them to follow.  Door shutting behind them, the quiet chatter of the lobby gave way to the even quieter hall, and the sterile air was thicker here.

“Keep it up, kiddo, maybe you’ll make his hair gray.”

“Like Doctor Piper?” Kevin asked then, his voice just as shy as it always was around strangers, and Jim held his baby a little closer with a soft sigh.  In response, the boy clung to him, fingers clenched in Jim’s shirt and his heavily freckled face tucked against the curve of his shoulder.  Carol didn’t seem to mind though, she was used to the youngest Kirk by then, but she gave the little boy a smile all the same.

“Daddy’s not old, though!”

Dissolving into laughter then, Carol propped open the door to their examination room, shaking her head at Jim when Tommy ran past.  Thankfully, she was a patient woman, and waited until he had his children settled down, one in the chair and one in his lap.

“Can you sit still for the tricorder, Kevin?”

Nodding, little lips pressed together tightly, the boy watched her with wide green eyes. She took it for the go-ahead that it was and waved the hand held device over him with practiced ease. Kevin held his breath through it, staring at her with those wide eyes, and his freckled lips pursed tightly.

Humming quietly at the readings the device took, she nodded at the results before tapping them down onto a PADD.

“So you’re fine that they won’t be seeing Mark?”

It took longer than it should have, to realize that Carol was talking to him, with soft distraction and admiration in her voice as she tapped away.  Blue eyes suddenly focused on her, Jim pulled Kevin a little closer to his chest, as if doing so would keep a strange doctor away from his baby.  In his arms, the boy hardly noticed though, and instead simply wriggled back against his father's chest, making himself comfortable for the visit.   ~~~~

“Excuse me?”

So, they were going to be seeing a new doctor, even though Mark had been the only physician to poke and prod them since they had been bundled onto the _Yorktown_ , skeletal and sallow.

Her dichromatic eyes found his, staring at him in that way that most of the women in his life seemed to; judgmental and sympathetic all at once.  Her lips pursed, a furrow appeared between her brows, and he could see the way her mind was working, could practically hear it. She chose her words carefully then, having been Dr. Piper’s nurse since he and his boys were rescued.

“Dr. Piper is on medical leave for the next few months; Janice was supposed to leave a message with the front desk to call you before the appointment.”

Carefully, he shook his head, watching as Carol’s expression turned stormy.

She straightened then, shaking her head and brushing her blond locks back with quick fingers. Despite the fire in her eyes, she gave the boys a smile, and Jim was grateful even as anxiety made his stomach start to bubble.  Beside him, Tommy had wriggled forward in his seat, and began to kick his little legs back and forth beneath the leather chair.

“His name is Leonard McCoy, and he’s been interning under Mark for almost as long as I have.  That’s five years that I’ve worked with the man and I trust him, Jim.  He’s good at what he does, and Mark specifically left him in charge while he’s gone.”

The smile she gave him was thin, hesitant, and the tone was the same one she had used when she had first approached him with a large shock blanket.  She’d stayed strong then when he’d snarled at her, both infants curled in his lap, caught in the protective bony cage of his thin arms and sharp knees. The floor of the _Yorktown_ had buzzed beneath him, turning his skin numb, and his face had been contorted into a wild expression, feral fire burning in his belly, but Carol had just tutted at him before wrapping the blanket around him and his charges.

“I trust him. Okay, Jimmy?”

Slowly, he nodded, watching her while he held one of his children close.

“Okay, good.  I’ll go tell him he’s got a patient, and you just sit tight with the monsters two.”

She left then, in a swirl of short blond hair and baby pink scrubs, shoes squeaking quietly on the polished linoleum floor.

The door clicked shut behind her, and silence fell upon the ragtag trio.  In his lap, Kevin squirmed, turning until he could look up at Jim with wide green eyes.  It must have shown on his face, the anxiety that he felt within his gut because, beside him, Tommy pulled himself up until he sat on his knees, and his little fingers touched Jim’s chin.  They pulled at his cheeks, pushed at his skin, and the oldest Kirk child let out a quiet, questioning sound.

“Daddy?”

Pressing his lips together, Jim turned his gaze from the diagram of ‘lung damage from smoking’ that was plastered to the other wall, and instead gave his attention to his children.  Tommy’s cheeks were puffed up, face contorted into a bloated expanse of concern.  He tried to smile then, but that obviously didn’t do anything for Tommy, because his hands just pushed Jim’s cheeks together, and held them there.

“Daddy, is this a Tarsus thing?”

Heart constricting in his chest, Jim slowly nodded, and watched as his six year old sighed.  In his lap, Kevin had turned enough that he could cuddle to Jim’s chest, and his little fingers clutched tight at Jim’s shirt.  Just then, Tommy threw his arms around Jim’s throat to hold him, burrowing as close as he could with the arms of the chairs between them.

“It’s okay, Daddy, you said we’re safe, remember?”

Chuckling wetly against the knot in his throat, Jim nodded, and pressed a kiss to the heads of both boys.

“Right.  Daddy’s not going to let anything get either of you.”

“And Grandpa and Uncle Spock keep Daddy safe!”

Smiling against Tommy's hair, Jim pressed another kiss to those brown locks, and held both boys close. The two held onto him like their lives depended on it and he let them, with a content sigh, happy to simply have them close.

"That’s right, Germ."

The knock on the door drew them all out of their haze, and Jim stared at the panel as it swished away into the wall.

"Hello, I'm Dr. McCoy, and I'll be covering for Dr. Piper today.  I'm supposed to be seeing-" His eyes were hazel; a honey bourbon that glimmered in the bright lights of the examination room.  Warm, dark skin and a comb of rich, mahogany locks, his lips were thin and his jaw was sharp, the cutting edges made stark by a layer of stubble. Wide shoulders, thick arms and a torso that tapered off…  Jim felt himself flush, and he pressed his lips together.

The man, Dr. Leonard McCoy, went wide eyed for a fraction of a second, just long enough for Jim to see, and a flash of pink tongue darted out from between his lips.

"Uh, I'm supposed to be seeing Kevin Kirk.  Is that one of these little tikes?"

Tommy plopped back down into his own seat, hands held in his lap in a habitual mimic of Spock, and Jim fought the urge to chuckle.  Instead, his fingers gently caught Kevin's side before the little boy could start to sway dizzily as he settled back down.  One pale hand went up, freckled fingers waggling shyly in greeting before he pressed back, trying to morph his spine to Jim's chest.

Leona- Dr. McCoy gave a smile then, one that softened his features and settled something fuzzy and warm in Jim's gut.  Grasp loosening further, Jim kept one arm pressed to Kevin's side, just to be safe, and couldn't seem to keep his wide eyes off the man. It was going to be a problem, he could already tell, from the flush on his face to the heat in his belly, and Jim couldn't hide, couldn't exactly bury his face in Kevin's ginger curls until it all went away.

Carol trusted him, but Jim would bet his trust fund that Carol also wanted to climb the man like a tree.

"He's Kevin, I'm Tommy, and Daddy says I do most of the talking, cuz Kevy's really shy!"

The man’s lips pulled back into a bit of a grin then, bright despite what it lacked in breadth, and he nodded like Tommy’s words made perfect sense.  He kept his hazel gaze on the oldest child, bending slightly so he was closer to Tommy’s level where he sat in his chair.  For a moment, his bright eyes flickered to Jim, assessing, as if Jim himself was something important, before sliding back to the children.

“Am I allowed to do his exam?”

He asked Tommy instead of Jim, as if Tommy’s approval was what really mattered.  It brought a small smile to Jim’s lips and, in his lap, Kevin squirmed his little fingers digging tight into the denim of Jim’s shorts. Under the attention though, Tommy preened, his body puffing up in his chair as if to make himself bigger.

“Only if you’re nice to him.”

“Of course.”

-

Slouched in his chair, hands pressed to his face, Jim let out another sigh.  The sound echoed, loud within his own ears and, when he shifted, the backs of his knees stuck to the chair beneath him.  It was the third sound he had let out in nearly ten minutes, and he would have felt more amused with himself if he hadn’t been so flustered.

Body bent half out of his chair, Jim’s feet stretched forwards and his fingers that didn’t grip the arm of his chair rose up, absently kneading at the muscle in his shoulder simply for something to do.  Across from him, Thelin sat with her fingers softly interlaced, a serene expression within her unseeing eyes, perfectly placed upon her pale blue features. Milky, blind eyes intent upon him, she seemingly watched him as if he weren’t throwing a small fit in her office and, instead, appeared genuinely interested in what he had to say. Really, Jim thanked her for that, she was indeed awesome in that way, with her careful, take no prisoners approach to him and his children. As it stood though, he was far too preoccupied with being embarrassed to _actually_ thank her.

“He was nice to my babies, Thelin, I wasn’t prepared for that.”

Quietly, she hummed, tapping her long fingers on the arm of her chair. Thin snow hair loose around her shoulders, the pale blue antennae on the top of her head swayed gently when she moved, soft tops curling slightly from their own weight. Tan blouse loose around her shoulders, the smile on her face was just as familiar as the rest of her, from the white hair on her head to her bare feet with pink painted toes.

“A General Practitioner, being nice to children? Oh! Say it isn’t so, Jim!”

“Thelin...”

She didn’t appear bothered though, not by the embarrassed tone in his voice nor the way that he whined her name. Instead, she simply smiled at him through her blind eyes and her cool expression, and daintily crossed one leg over the other.  Head tilting slightly, her hair spilled over her shoulders, and the psychiatrist that sat across from him seemed angelic in nature.

“That just won’t do, I’ll have to get hold of someone for a malpractice suit. He should really know better; the nerve of some doctors.”

Pressing his hands to his face, he slouched farther down in his seat until his legs were stretched as far as they could go. She was far too amused; she seemed to enjoy his misery far too much, and he peeked at her from between his fingers.  Sure enough, that same smile was on her face, enigmatic and all-seeing, and Jim let out a long suffering sigh.

“Thelin, you don’t understand.  I don’t… I haven’t been attracted to somebody since before Tarsus.”

The amusement fell from her face then, whether from the words or from his tone, and the Aenarian sat up straighter in her chair. Her voice was measured, milky eyes seemingly seeing everything even when they were looking though him, and the antennae on the top of her head waved gently when she moved.

“And this scares you, doesn’t it?”

He nodded slowly, sapphire eyes wide, and felt the silence that settled around him sharp in his belly.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, been a few, sorry about that. Next chapter is actually mostly done, so it should be up within a week- fingers crossed, watch my luck and it wont happen. Regardless, here you go lovelies, have an update with his adorable, dysfunctional family~ Comments are welcomed, questions will be answered, and as always, stay beautiful darlings.

_The air inside her office seemed stifling then, near boiling against the delicate layers of his golden skin, and Jim felt himself tremble. There was such desperation in him, bubbling sick and tight in his gut, and it made his throat hurt, his eyes burn. Everything was off, from the words upon his tongue to the way that Thelin was gazing past him with her soft, blind eyes._

_"Are you attracted to him? I thought you explained to me that your sexuality doesn't allow you to physically want someone unless yo-"_

_"Unless I know them on an extensive, emotional and mental level, yeah. Demisexuality is the norm for Vulcans;, mental compatibility is everything for them and I've talked to Spock about this, a lot, so I know how it works. And I don't necessarily_ _want him, McCoy, it’s..."_

_Breaking off, his lips smacked together, but there was no judgment there, no pressure to answer, to be better. Instead, he was given only reassuring silence and a gentle smile, and it_ _was enough to placate him and let the words slip from his tongue._

_"I_ want _to want him, if that makes sense? He's handsome, subjectively; I can imagine women fluster at the sight of him, and he seems like the type that would cause those sorts of reactions.”_

_It was easier, once he got going. The things Jim said came freely, brought forth by the hour that he had spent in the older man’s company. “He works out to some degree, because he was far more fit than most doctors I’ve seen. He’s also great with children, which is kind of necessary for his job, and he was professional without being stiff about it.”_

_His words were clinical, and Thelin obviously noticed, because she leaned back in her chair, head tilting. The soft, snowy strands of her hair fell easily over one shoulder, and there was something critical in her sightless eyes. The smile upon her lips remained soft, though, as if she didn’t hold the power to wreck his brain with a few simple words._

_“You noticed something while you were in there though, didn’t you, Jim?”_

_Swallowing, he stared at her then, blue eyes wide and his lips pressed together tightly. She knew him though, perhaps more than she should, and it was that knowledge that made her good at her job, that kept Thelin sharp. Still, she pulled words from his mouth that he didn’t know he wanted to speak._

_“He got this look, when he saw me. Like he was hungry, or thirsty, and I was the best thing he’d ever seen.”_

_A low, humming sound throbbed in her throat then, soothing and soft. Her legs uncrossed, delicate, pink painted toes flexing along the carpet as she went flat footed. Her fingertips were treated much the same, nails softly rounded with care and painted pale, and Thelin worried one thumbnail along the curve of her pointer finger._

_“Do you think he wanted you?”_

_“Just because I don’t usually experience arousal doesn’t mean that I don’t know it when I see it.”_

_She smiled at him then, directly at him rather than in the space above his head or past his shoulder. A glance to the left showed the clock on the wall, and Jim denied himself the urge to sink lower into his seat. She would dig at him then, for his posture and his evasiveness, and they had worked so hard on his issues, had come so far from how he had been during their first session._

_“How did it_ _make you feel, Jim, realizing that someone wanted you?”_

_Flushing, Jim chose his words carefully; felt their weight in the way that they hung heavy in his throat. They were unfamiliar, the words he planned to say, the thoughts raced that through his head, and he chewed on his tongue for a moment. The silence that settled on them was easy, careful and unassuming as moments of quiet always were, within the familiar four walls of Thelin’s office._

_“I wasn’t scared. I actually think that, I… I think that it was the first time I haven’t minded somebody noticing me like that.”_

-

“Your _katra_ is unfocused.”

“Huh?”

Eyes cracking open, Jim stared at the familiar shape of Spock through his lashes.

Across from him, the twenty-one year old looked as patient as ever, with his black hair untouched by the soft California breeze and his long body lax in the position of meditation. Legs crossed, palms resting carefully on his knees, every inch of the half-Vulcan before him spoke of the relaxation that coursed through his green veins. Still, despite this, his best friend stared at him with sharp, knowing, deep brown eyes.

Flushing, Jim rearranged his limbs, his legs threatening to fall asleep from how they were folded. One knee clacked against the harsh cement, having missed the soft mesh of his meditation mat, and his lips pulled down into a wince, but Jim kept himself upright all the same. A hush had fallen over them, from the time that he’d sat down until the moment that Spock had interrupted him, and as he stared at his childhood friend with distracted confusion, Jim pursed his lips even while flexing his arms, finished with trying to meditate for the time being.

Spock left it at that though, didn’t elaborate on what he meant or what he wanted, and simply watched Jim with dark eyes, instead.  It was enough, because the meditative calm he’d been trying to reach hadn’t happened and, with a long suffering sigh, Jim unfolded his legs to a more comfortable position again. Fingers pulling at his hair for a moment, he gave Spock a smile and a shrug.

“I’ve been distracted for a few days, it’s alright.”

Those were the wrong words to use though, for Spock sat straighter, barely a shift along the line of his spine and the arch of his shoulders, but Jim knew his friend - had known him since Jim was still young enough to wet himself and Spock would punch his bullies - and the tips of his fingers flexed in the soft fabric of his pants.

“If something or someone has caused you grief, I request that you tell me so that the situation may be remedied at once.”

Huffing, Jim shook his head, smiling wider, slower, as he bent forward.  Elbows rested on the mat before his knees, chin cupped in his hands, it was a sharp, sweet strain on his back to hold the position, but he relaxed into it with a quiet sound.

“No, Spock, no one’s like, attacked me or anything, promise.  Just...it’s a sex thing, I think?  Like, a guy noticed me, in a sexual way, to the point that I noticed.  I noticed him, noticing me in that way, and it was a little awkward because my kids were there? But I ju- why are you getting up? Spock?”

Tilting his head back to watch his friend, Jim’s eyes went wide at the sight of his clenched fingers, the way that his brows were pulled down into sharp slants. Untangling his limbs with a series of jarring motions, he hoisted himself up, grasping at the edge of Spock’s shirt with quick fingers. The Vulcan stared down at him with a tight expression of irritation, and his lips were pressed into a thin line.

“For someone to have distracted you in such a way, they have caused mental unrest.  I find that I cannot take such a grievance lightly, given the information that I already possess of your mental faculties.”

_Spock to layman’s Standard: I need to tell your father that someone has made you uncomfortable, because you're already batshit, Jim._

Using his grip on Spock’s shirt to pull himself up, Jim shook his head, feet asleep and his breath coming out in a startled laugh. Spock’s eyebrows had risen to such a height that even Jim, in his ‘perpetually illogical state’ hardly ever saw, but he was used to Jim and his strange, human idiosyncrasies. One of his hands simply braced itself under Jim’s arm to help hold him up, and his alien skin was hot to the touch.

“No! No, Spock you don’t get it, don’t run to my Dad, or your Da-fuck, don’t run to your _Mom_.”

There was laughter on his tongue, coloring his voice and pulling at the corners of his eyes until they crinkled.  Spock looked far from amused, furious even, but that expression only seemed to further Jim’s own amusement, and his fingers tightened on the hem of Spock’s shirt. Letting his legs go, he pulled the Vulcan down with him back to the sun-lit cement until Spock had no choice but to sit once more.

“I didn’t mind, Spock.”

“That is highly illogical.”

Grinning at his friend, his brother, Jim's shoulders danced in a wavering shrug. Still, Spock folded his legs, made no move to rise from his position on the patio, and that was a start. Carefully, Jim released his hold on the other's shirt, smoothed the wrinkled fabric with his fingers.

"Is it illogical because I'm not usually comfortable or affected by sexual topics, therefore you don't know how to take this, or because this is one of those stupid human traits that you don't understand because you think it’s a bad habit?"

Dark eyes watched him from below equally dark, sharp brows, and Spock's expression tried valiantly to remain flat.  There was a quirk to his mouth though, something bright in his eyes that Jim knew. He recognized it, enough to call that a faint spark amusement, those traces of warmth stemming from the sort of frustration only ever reserved for him.

"Yes."

Mouth falling open, Jim huffed a laugh around his tongue, and gave a shove to his friend's shoulders.

"Fuck you."

"My apologies, Jim. While I understand and admire your fascination with the prospect of copulating with me, I find that I must remind you of my circumstances and the fact that I have a betrothed. Had you told me of your intentions sooner," there was a smile on his lips then, and humor in the cool, crisp tones of his voice, "I do not doubt that you could have had your way with me." 

Jim's laugh was pulled out of his chest, a bright, booming sound that danced through the courtyard around them.  Spock's private home was alivethen with the undeniable, loud presence of human delight, though surely the grounds around them were well acquainted with the sensation of Jim's laughter.

He pressed forward, another hard shove at Spock's shoulder, and the Vulcan let forth a long suffering sigh even as he fell to lay on his back in the warm sunlight. Stretched out beside his friend, Jim continued to chuckle, head light in a way that it hadn't been in a few days.

"Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?"

"I find that Mother is quite enamored with the sense of humor that your influence has given me."

Silence settled then, light and easy upon them, and their eyes fell shut in response to the sunlight upon their faces. There was a calm sort of quiet within Jim, stretching through him and warming him in the ways their shared meditation usually did, and he turned his head enough to stare out into the tranquil expanse of Spock’s private estate.

"I'll tell you, if it turns out I'm wrong about him, or I don't actually like it, alright?"

"Alright, Jim."

There was something familiar and fierce in Spock's tone then, those two simple words spoken with such conviction that he could feel them upon his skin. With another sigh, Jim closed his eyes, letting his head fall against his brother's shoulder.

-

Ancient xeno-philosophy was by far the densest subject Jim had taken, and he was only in the second semester of his early admittance courses for this doctorate.  Mathematical theorems were like a balm to his aching soul; command tactics, survival training and interstellar diplomacy were the breath within his lungs, but the theories and the principles of alien philosophy wrecked his brain in a way that he had started to crave.

His father had laughed at him, more out of disbelief than amusement when Jim had been all of sixteen and broken within his own mind.  He had paid for the schooling for the first doctorate though, fascinated by the way that Jim had torn through the mathematical regulations and possibilities of life, time and space. That laughter hadn't lasted long, not when Jim had torn through two years of schooling in a single semester, using the numbers and the work to give himself solace while he got used to being human again, to having babies of his own that needed him just as much as he needed them. Chris had paid for the first one, gladly, but the Fleet had offered to pay for the second, both delighted and horrified by the prospect of the mental prowess and tenacity of a seventeen year old human.  

Chris had pulled him aside, then pulled some strings to deny him entry into his second go round, the first time, and Jim had turned on him then.  Anger had turned into confusion, then into fear, as the intellect that he had built his mental and emotional foundation on had been threatened and pulled away from him.  Chris hadn't let him stay angry though, hadn't given him the chance to be scared, for instead he'd thrust Tommy and Kevin into his arms before telling Jim to breathe, be a kid, be a dad.

That year had been the most relaxed he had ever had, and every day had crawled past in a slow haze of breakfast with his children and their laughter the breath within his lungs. He'd gotten a job, desperate for something to do by the second week, and his Dad had just sighed at him in exasperation. That job had carried him through, still did, and he _hated_ coffee, the smell and the taste of it, but evidently he could make a mean cup of the stuff. That job paid for the books for the second doctorate he strove for, and the hours weren't great, but it was something that he could call his own.

Around him, the park was filled with the buzzing sounds of life, from animals to the quiet flow of water in the pond; from the distant hum of hover cars to the thrum of laughter and voices that carried on the air. To his right, he could hear his sons, voices raised in children's shrieks of delight at the prospect of open grass and sunlight. They were enamored with the fresh air and the cool fall breeze, playing on bellies still full from breakfast, and that was good enough for him.

"Daddy!"

A heavy, little body fell against his, flopped upon the arch of his back, and Jim's breath was forced out of him in a huff. Turning sideways, a smile pulled wide and quick at his lips, and his hands wrapped around Kevin's little body. Pulling the boy, carefully but quickly, Jim dropped his son against his chest just to listen to the boy's squealing laughter.

He caught the hitching sound to Kevin's breath, the sharp sound in his chest that he made every time the world swam sideways, and Jim cupped a hand to the side of his son's head to support him.

"Hey, Bug, get tired of your brother?"

Ginger hair scrubbing against his palm, Kevin's shook his head quickly, and his sharp little fingers gripped tight to Jim's shirt. Cinnamon freckled lips pursing, he stared wide eyed at Jim and gasped for air for a moment, dizzy and breathless all at once.

"Tommy's talkin' to a stranger,"

Grip tightening on his youngest, Jim left his datapads and his personal bag filled with water bottles and bandages, and surged to his feet. With a high yelp, Kevin clung to him tight, thin arms slung around his neck and his fingers clenched in the short blonde hairs at the back of Jim's head. Bracing a hand on his youngest’s back, just under the curve of his rump, Jim held the boy tight.

"Thomas Leighton Kirk!"

His son looked so small, standing next to the man that Jim didn't immediately recognize. His brown head was tipped back to talk up at the man, but at the shout of his name his thin shoulders rose up and, even with the distance between them, Jim saw the shamed flush that spread across his son's skin.

Kevin clasped tight to his chest, Jim jogged to his eldest boy with a scared sort of fury in his blood.

"Thomas, what's the first rule?"

"Don't talk to anyone I don't know unless Daddy says it’s okay first."

Close enough then, he reached out, fingers finding Tommy’s shoulder to pull the boy close to his side. He went easily, hands latching onto Jim’s leg out of habit, and if he resented the way his little brother rested a possessive foot on the top of his head, he didn’t let it show.  Instead, he seemed content to stare at his father with a furrowed brow, and Jim felt his heart continue to hammer in his chest.

He looked up then, away from Tommy’s little face and Kevin’s steady grip, to familiar honey-bourbon eyes. Licking his lips, leaning back to not have to stare up at the man so much, Jim took a small step backwards. The distance between them felt far more substantial then, and his heart calmed its dance in his chest.

The good Doctor was out of uniform, instead dressed in brown joggers and a blue tank top, and Jim watched the sweat bead roll down his exposed clavicle with a captivated eye. Gaze jerking up to the man’s face then, he noticed there was a large patch of stubble across his jaw, and Jim felt the need to rub at his own face in a self-conscious response, to check the state of his own beard. The other man stared at him, an amused quirk to his thin lips, and Jim gripped his children a bit tighter.

“I tried to tell you, Daddy, it’s just Dr. McCoy!”

As if that made the situation any better.

Humming quietly, he gave the man a long look before glancing down at Tommy with a sigh.

“You can’t just talk to someone because you’ve seen them once, Tommy, it isn’t right.”

Quiet laughter filled his ears, a gentle, rumbling sound, and Jim looked back up to catch the bashful look on the older man’s features.  He gave Jim a loose grin then, like he didn’t know what else to do with himself.

“He didn’t do anythin’ wrong, honest. He just wanted to know about my ink.”

Somehow, he had missed it, the careful, delicate linework upon the other man’s skin. Pale grey and white lines, painstaking shading to make the effect gentle, set off only by the thin, arching lines of black. The sun-dark skin of the man’s arms, disappearing into where the tank top covered his shoulders, were a monochrome display of anatomical bones, no doubt usually hidden behind the cuffs of button shirts and crisp, folded collars.

“Impressive, Doctor.”

“Leonard, please. It’s strange to be called that when I’m not in the uniform.”

Nodding, watchful, it was impossible to mistake the heat in the man’s gaze, the way that his bright eyes seemed intent to stare at Jim’s form. There was a grass stain on one of Jim’s knees, and the shirt he wore was an old, ratty thing, pilfered from his Dad’s closet when he was younger. It only just fit him, a little long in the arms and a little wide in the neck, but it was as comfortable as anything he owned. Still, he felt impossibly young beside the other man, and he gripped Kevin to his side for a moment before carefully adjusting his grasp on his son.

“I’m going to ask that you call me Jim, then, only seems fair...”

Little hands tugged at his leg and, half way through his sentence, Jim had dropped his head to stare down at his eldest. There was something sharp on his son’s face, conspiratorial in a way that not only did Jim recognize, but he knew better than to trust, and he didn’t even have time to tense. Brown eyes wide, little face smudged with dirt, Tommy was simultaneously the image of every angel and every demon that Jim had ever known, in his childlike innocence.

“Daddy, Mr. Leonard should come with us for ice cream!”

Eyes widening, Jim didn’t have a chance, not when Kevin let out a pleased giggle against his throat before arching his spine in warbling, childish excitement. Only Jim’s hand on his back kept the little boy upright, and his entire body bent with his son to keep the boy from slipping. Thomas used it to his advantage, swaying sideways to latch onto Leonard’s hand, and Jim felt an embarrassed heat rise to his face.

“Tommy, you can’t jus-”

“Actually, ice cream sounds great right about now.”

The words were spoken to his children, and the both of them seemed overjoyed with the fact that a near stranger, their _doctor_ for crying out loud, wanted to join them for ice cream. Leonard’s eyes were only on Jim though, bright and burning in a way that he wasn’t used to, that he understood even if he didn’t feel prepared to take. Swallowing, there was something like anticipation in his gut, pulling his insides tight in a way that he found he didn’t really mind.

Head moving in a slow nod, Jim swept his tongue across his chapped lips, and watched as Leonard’s eyes tracked the movement.

“I really don’t think you know what you’re agreeing to, but it's your headache.”

The answering smile was warm, in a soft, sunlit kind of way, and Jim felt the proverbial press of it all the way down to his toes even as Leonard chuckled around his words.

“It’s just ice cream, how bad can it be?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there! I've gotten some beautiful comments on this story, and lots of excitement, so thank you dearies, heres a new chapter for you!  
> Also, the horror in the fact that my best friend and Beta is six hours ahead of me, and on the other side of the world. This makes not only my writing life difficult, but do you have any idea how hard it is to gossip with somebody who should be going to bed by the time you get out of work or lectures? Ugh, my life. I love her though, won't trade her for a thing. Enjoy some Jim  
> Disclaimer: I'm labeling Jim as demi-sexual, with the take on the matter that I myself am demi-sexual. This being said, everyones sexuality is their own, and different due to that. Meaning, that just because Jim experiences something a certain way, and goes about his emotions and sexual appetite in a certain manner, doesn't mean that that's how every demi-sexual person goes about those sort of relations, I am simply basing his sexuality in this story on how I experience my own. Don't put somebody into a textbook box just because of their sexuality. Every person is an individual, with different thoughts, expectations and experiences for and from life, and they should be treated accordingly based on what they want.

_Soupy water sloshed around his thighs, and Jim shut his eyes against the cloying sensation.  His body felt beaten beyond repair, almost too weak to carry on but too desperate to stop, and little fingers clawed at him. A three year old clung to his neckwith all his furious might and, strapped between the press of their bodies, the baby was oddly quiet._

_It not for the two heartbeats thundering wildly against his back, Jim would have thought the youngest boy dead._

_He just wanted to get them out of the water, out of the open. They couldn't drink this water, not with the runoff from the diseased plants that had surely drained into it, not with the way things had been going. He hadn't seen so much water in one place in weeks and it made him nervous; made the already queasy, empty feeling in his gut sharpen. They couldn't drink the water that they found most times, not unless it was painstakingly gathered from the rains that liked to fall at the worst of moments, and even then they weren't always lucky enough to get enough of the precious fall, or even catch any of it at all._

_There were only so many times they could be persuaded drink their own urine and they were already sick._

_He stopped short, hip deep now in the slow churning river, and Thomas - that was the boy’s name and he knew that, even if he couldn't stand to look at the gaunt little face - gripped tighter, tiny fingers pulling at him. Between them, the littlest of their party let out a whimper, and he couldn't even find the breath to shush him._

_"Jim?"  One of the twins, Atimeh-Yna or Al-Halelmas, he couldn't tell at this point for their voices had always sounded the same, soothing low tones of ember warmth and old stories, called out. Their entire party came to a stop in the middle of the river, just like that. "Jim, why have we stopped?"_

_"We're not stopping, I just-" Throat tight, he forced himself to swallow, to turn and look:  their sharp featured faces looked almost identical as starvation had stolen both the small buds of her breasts and his wiry muscles.  It was Atimeh-Yna, then, with her hairless head and her full mouth, because Al-Halelmas was taller, second oldest only behind Jim and he always took up the rear. She looked so scared, with a seven year old dangling from her sharp shoulders and a crusting of blood on her hollow cheek. "Just watch your step, okay?"_

_She nodded, slow and unsure, and all around them the water was dark; from dirt and only God knew what else._

_His heart in his throat, Jim forced himself to walk forward, to ignore the roiling of his own belly. Under the dirty cover of the water, something brushed against his calf, and he thought he would cry out. A gag tried to force its way out of the raw tunnel of his throat, and Jim bit it back with sharp teeth and a quick tongue. Those were fingers, unmistakable in their feeling, water-logged and weary where they brushed, limp and death-chilled across his skin. The water was dark, impossibly so, and he couldn't tell how many bodies there were; didn't know how much of the dark in the water was rot rather than dirt._

_He was going to puke._

_He was going to puke and as Atimeh-Yna started her quiet singing once more, El-Aurian hymns soothing and soft on the hot air, Jim found that he didn't much care for any God, just then._

_-_

"Oh, for the love of God, _Kevin_!"

Leonard seemed to be fighting a losing battle against laughter and Jim shot a sharp glare at the other man in response. That hardly helped, though the good Doctor had the grace to look sheepish even as he continued to chuckle.  Caught in his hold, Tommy's body was bent at the waist, hips pressed to Leonard's chest by the bone-etched band of one arm.

The six year old was more than pleased, thin arms stretched up and his dirty hands pressed to the gleaming glass that separated the flavors displayed from the people in line. He trusted Leonard with his weight as if he had known the man all his life, depending on him to keep him safe and secure. _Unquestioning_ trust, and Jim's throat tightened at the sight.

"Daddy, it’s just strahberr'."

Kevin's tone was low, mirroring the exasperation in Jim's own, as if the child had the right. Snorting, he tightened his hold on his youngest when the boy started to slip.

"You're allergic to strawberries, we've been over this."

Kevin smiled at him, gap toothed, in the disarming way that only children could, and Jim sighed. Beside him, Leonard didn't even try to smother his laughter, and Thomas was a lost cause. There was little he could do in response to that, and he simply pressed his lips together, instead.

"It's okay, Daddy."

One of Kevin's little hands patted at his cheek, trying to sooth. The manner was reminiscent of the way that the boys had seen Chris affectionately cuff him on the head, and it set the same comfortable warmth in his blood.

"Bug, baby, I love you, I really do…" the more he spoke, the more Kevin's green eyes brightened. The little boy’s body wriggled with growing excitement, stubborn and refusing to listen, but darling all the same. "…but you won’t have any strawberry, unless you want another shot."

Just like that, the excitement was gone, lost to the wind. Kevin leaned back in his grasp, looking at him with the wide eyed horror that only children could ever really manage, little mouth open on a startled pout. Jim slipped a hand along the back of the boy’s head to hold him up, and his fingers smoothed over soft, ginger strands of hair.

"Daddy!"

A little leaf came free, golden and bright, and it fell to the ground with a silent flutter.

"Kevin!"

Beside them, Leonard had seemingly given up trying to be an adult, because a deep bellied laugh pulled from within him. Wide eyed, Jim gave him a glance, watched the way the man's body quaked with the sound, and fought a smile from escaping his own lips. There was something startling about him, but the casual air of dominance that Leonard wore was softened by the low sound of his laughter as the skin around his eyes crinkled, wrinkled with mirth.

“And what about this one?”

The boy behind the counter droned the question in a bored tone, and Kevin’s voice followed suit in a much more excited rush, filling the store with his squealing.

“Strahberr’!”

Head turning quickly, caught up in his distraction, it took Jim a moment longer than he would have liked to tune into the conversation between the vendor and his son; gaping at the unimpressed teenager behind the counter before he snapped to attention. Grasping Kevin when the boy wriggled, Jim shook his head, tongue clicking behind his teeth.

“No, no strawberry. He’s allergic, can’t even have the synthetic stuff. Just give him chocolate.”

The whine of disappointment Kevin made from within his arms was ignored, and instead Jim watched as the boy shrugged, filling the dish with a scoop of smooth chocolate ice cream. His arms were longer, and so when the teenager handed the dish over top of the counter, Jim reached it before Kevin could. Balancing it carefully, his son cradled in one arm, Jim turned, only to find Leonard staring at him with one thick eyebrow raised, and a contemplative look on his features.

“You not getting any?”

With both hands full and one side of his body weighted heavily by his wiggling child, Jim shrugged. The action was slow, more of a timed wobble of his shoulders than an actual shrug, but it got the message across. Sliding down in line, to take Kevin’s bowl from the counter before the man, Kevin seemed content to just cling to his side then, satisfied with the simple dish of chocolate, and Jim took it for the blessing that it was.

“Don’t like ice cream?”

“I’m allergic to dairy, actually.”

The words were supplied slowly, with near-reluctance, and Jim tried to carefully nudge the older man out of the way to put Kevin’s dish on the register next to Tommy’s.  In response, Leonard simply took it from him, putting his own with the two childrens’ and, before Jim could protest, he handed a credit chit to the girl that worked the register.

“There’s got to be _something_ you can eat here, though?”

“You really don’t have to do that.”

A soft smile was given to him, and Jim felt his own breath catch in his lungs.

“You can pay me back next time.”

Words left him then, and Jim could do nothing but watch and flounder as Leonard paid for his childrens’ food. Going with the motions, he moved with them when Leonard took the dishes and Tommy, shuffling them off to a booth in the corner of the 19th Century inspired ice cream parlor. Kevin kicked his feet gently, having been given his dish of chocolate, and the child held it like the Holy Grail he obviously thought it was. It wasn’t until they’d all gotten comfortable in their seats, with Jim keeping a close eye on his youngest to make sure that no real mess was made, that he lifted his eyes again, moving his gaze away from his child to stare at Leonard, instead.

The man seemed so at ease with his children, as if he had known them for as long as Jim had. He kept an arm over the back of Tommy’s half of the booth, fingers hanging close to the boys shoulder. His larger body sat between Tommy’s and the aisle, protective in a deceptively casual way that Jim recognized for what it was, as a parent; his shoulders curled in, bent down toward Tommy as if prepared for the six year old to pull them into conversation.

It was as if Leonard had been there before, in their lives with them for some time, and it should have been terrifying in a way… but it wasn’t.

“What makes you think there’ll be a next time?”

Bright eyes were on him then, lined with dark lashes and hot with something that Jim couldn’t recognize, burning in a way that Jim wasn’t used to. He moved back, where he sat beside Kevin, fingers flexing against the booth’s vinyl even as his glacial blue eyes darted from Leonard to the table for a moment, before rising once more. That look though, it gave him pause, and he could only stare back at Leonard warily in return.

The man was obviously entranced by whatever it was he saw, for his gaze was bottomless in a way that spoke of memorization. Jim had seen that sort of look before; on the faces of the hungry and the hopeless, when they were lost in delusion or seeing salvation for the first time.  It was unsettling, to have such a gaze turned on him, when there had been nothing that he had done to deserve it. Every interaction Jim had with the other man had been honest, earnest in the only way that he could ever manage, and yet the good Doctor seemed so content to simply stare.

Jim flushed, under the heat and weight of that gaze, and shifted nervously in his seat. His own eyes fell again then, from Leonard to the table top, and he resisted the urge to pick at the vinyl beneath his nails. His sons were oblivious, as enraptured by their treats as he had known they would be, and Jim was left to fend for himself beneath the careful, hungry gaze of a man that lured him into experiencing desire. ~~~~

So this was what it was like, then, to be wanted in a way that didn’t feel suffocating; in a way that didn’t threaten to devour him, to rend him limb from soul. There was a stark difference in the hunger that he could see in Leonard, compared to the greed and gluttony that he had experienced from the grasping fingers of Kodos’ guards. It was nothing like the malice and the all-consuming demands that he had been force-fed by the sexual appetites of the Governor himself, all in exchange for a few scraps of food and a canister of clean water for his horde of children.

“I was hoping,” Leonard’s words were spoken slowly, as if each syllable was pulled from his tongue with the kind of care that he gave his patients, “I was _hoping_ that you’d go on a date with me, sometime.”  There was something curling to the end of each word, an accent that Jim couldn’t place his finger on, but he was startled to find that it made something hot and heady start to simmer within his abdomen. ~~~~

-

Talaxian champagne, circa 2024, was best taken cold, in chilled, crystal champagne flutes. The taste of it was enjoyed at its finest when coupled with subtle foods; delicate along the palate and enhanced by the shimmer of the liquor. It was a drink for a socialite and required affluent satin and silk dresses, silk waist-coats and virgin wool vests, for one should look as dazzling as possible in the environment that would allow them such a beverage. 

Jim took his in a red plastic disposable cup with greasy, dairy-free pizza and his most comfortable pair of sweatpants.

His companion was a smooth, smoke gray pelted female, with pale tufts of tawny and white fur highlighted along the line of her tail and the voluptuous mane of her hair. She had an angular face, nose and mouth extended in a sloping muzzle.  Her lips were full, her eyes a toxic, feline-yellow, and her ears pulled away from her head: alert, tapered triangles that peeked out from within her hair. Pale patches of tawny and cream shades highlighted her short, smooth fur and her nails were long, naturally arched claws painted a glittering white.

Her sand-paper tongue slipped out from between her dark lips, chasing a stray bead of champagne across the wide mouth of her cup, and a faint rasping sound came with the action. There was inquisition in her eyes, humor in her purring breaths, and Jim relaxed further into his half of the couch.

"You told him yes, though, right?"

There was a faint lisp to her words, brought about by the weight of her fangs in her jaw and the shape of her mouth. Behind them, down the hall in the dark of the apartment, Tommy and Kevin were both asleep, having been fed, bathed and tucked away in the wake of their excitement about Leonard. The apartment was quiet, as quiet as it would ever be with two boys and a single Dad, and Jim took the silence gratefully with a relieved sigh and a few slices of pizza.

"I just met him, Sasiss, you can't expect me to just jump his bones."

He meant it, really, he did, but there was something disbelieving about the way that she shook her head at him. Her breath left her in a rolling purr, and Jim watched as his friend rearranged herself on his couch. Curled as she was, her lower body was curved around a cushion, and she was content to hold her cup with both hands even while her plate of pizza balanced precariously on her thighs. Heavy and warm, the line of her thick tail coiled around one of his ankles, and Jim rolled his foot into the familiar contact.

"It would be a shame not to. He's a strong man with much money, yes, very attractive too."  Her fangs clinked quietly against the plastic of her cup, and her sun-bright eyes stared at him over the red rim. "Would keep you fat with cubs, well fed and cared for."

Flushing at her words, Jim shook his head on a startled laugh. He hadn't expected such a frank opinion from her and, really, he should have because the Caitian had no shame to speak of; a cultural trait and one that he generally tended to appreciate for the color it brought into his life. Still, he found himself thankful that his children were asleep, because he snorted, taking Talaxian champagne up his nose in a rushing burn.

Dropping the cup onto the coffee table, his hands flew to cradle his face instead. His skin buzzed with the rich bubbles doing their best to lodge themselves into his sinuses, and Jim groaned, eyes shutting tight. He could feel his friend’s fingers on his arm then, claws ticking against his skin in a comforting rhythm, and he would have cursed her if he could find his breath.

"He seems like a big man, this Leonard. Fit man, he would be thick enough to split you nicely, breed well. Thorough."

"Fucking Christ, _Sasiss_!"  

His children were asleep, and there was only so far thathe could raise his voice.  Still, there was scandal on his breath, rumbling laughter on hers, and his embarrassment colored the air. Her eyes were narrowed in mirth upon him when he finally opened his own, and Jim kicked out at her in retaliation.

Her leftover pizza crust slid to the floor with a starchy _thump_ and the two of them stared at it mournfully for a moment.

"I was saving that."

"You know, you say that but you never actually eat them."

Her lips pushed out into a pout, as much as her muzzle would allow her, and their roles were reversed, Jim patting gently at her shoulder while one hand held his bubbling nose.

"I meant it this time."

"I’m sure you did."

She seemed content to pout, torn by the loss of her supposedly lost treat, and Jim sighed. Stretching, he scooped up his cup once more, and tipped it back for a mouthful of bubbling, blue champagne. It was a splash of sensation across his tongue, and he swallowed it quietly, settling back on the couch once more.

Her tail thumped against his ankle, and his fingers scooped up his own slice of pizza, safe from the floor and still warm from the box. Grease clung to his fingers, made the flesh of his lips shine, and he took a large bite. Eyes falling shut as he chewed, Jim felt his companion shift, as she lifted a new slice of her own from the box on the coffee table.

The silence between them was familiar, comfortable, and the pizza was hot on his tongue while the champagne tickled at the roof of his mouth.

"I gave him my personal Comm number."

He felt Sasiss jerk against him, but Jim didn't bother opening his eyes. Instead, he took another bite of his food, content with the darkness behind his closed lids, and felt the Caitian beside him quietly fret.

"So you'll date him?"

Lips pursing, her claws were skimming the underside of his chin, petting him as if he were the one with a feline ancestry. Cracking his eyes open, Jim squinted at her, blue gaze bright behind his lashes, and he got a smile for his trouble. All teeth; he could count her fangs if he wanted to, and he could see the smudge of pizza sauce on one canine.

"It’s a _maybe,_ not a _yes_."

She had the marks for whiskers; faint raised bumps along her muzzle that twitched even without the wiry hairs there. They seemed more like freckles, dark little specks along her cheeks and nose, and they were so judgmental when her face screwed up like that.

"Does Leonard realize that?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I told you there would be sporadic updates, and I was right. Senior courses at Uni plus an 18 hour a week job at a coffee shop (I feel for Jim now, oh my god), so I'm more than a little brain fuzzed. But, here is some new feels, have some emotion and tell me what you thing, please and thank you.

_“That was_ awesome _!”_

_The words were bright things, running from his tongue and pounding into the ears of anyone close enough to hear him. There was such excitement in his veins, burning, pulsing along beneath his skin, and Jim felt like he would vibrate apart from it.  Every piece of him was alive, every detail around him in sharp focus, and all the voices and sounds were loud, screaming things, and he couldn’t keep the grin from his face._

_More than likely, that was the adrenaline talking._

_Sprawled on his back in the sunlight, the heat of it burned at his skin, and Jim curled his fingers at the feeling. Yearned to reach out and grasp handfuls of the sun, press it into his skin so it would forever keep him warm, so it would never let the dark in. The sun in San Francisco was a familiar friend, and Jim welcomed it with open arms and a seven-year-old’s shameless, eager flush._

_“While you appear to be enthralled by your predicament, I must stress that you not move, Jim.”_

_Spoke wasn’t offering a smile; no trace of a grin, nor a huff of laughter, and he would have felt disappointed in that fact if he could just be bothered. There was distraction in the sharp sensations coursing through his body, and Jim just turned his head to stare at Spock instead, blue eyes wide and his grin gap-toothed. There was something to be said, surely, about the ‘blind devotion’ that traveled between them – that was what their parents called it, at least, but he wasn’t so sure about that yet.  Spock was his brother, his person, and while Dad and Aunt Amanda seemed set on that phrase, ‘blind devotion’, it didn’t feel like quite enough._

_“Spock!  Look though, I’m okay!”_

_As if to prove his point, his arms made a sharp pinwheel in the air, and Jim’s grin disappeared from his face. The motion of his arms jerked his entire body, and he could feel it then, the burning hot pain in his left leg. He cried out, tears washing quickly through his blue eyes, and then they dribbled down his face in a searing, slippery fall before he could stop them.  In response, Spock skimmed quick fingers across his chubby cheek, and Jim turned his head into the touch._

_“N-not okay!”_

_“You have suffered a compound fracture along the upper segment of your tibia. I would like to remind you that I specifically warned you of the danger of climbing the tree, and implored you to not leap from such a height.”_

_Swallowing thickly, cheeks burning hot with tears and his nose running with snot, Jim gave a frantic sort of understanding nod. It hurt, a shimmering burn that raced through his leg to his belly, and he felt like he was going to puke. Still, there was no shame in crying, no shame in feeling fear, and he reached out for his friend and brother instead._

_“I want up.”_

_“Jim, I do not believe that to be a wis-“_

_There was a difference, from the petulance that he had previously displayed, to the wet, pleading note that filled the single word. It wrenched from his throat, bright and dripping with anxiety, and even a Vulcan wasn’t immune to the quiet desperation that came from Jim’s lips._

_“Please?”_

_There was a sigh then, pulled from Spock’s chest, and the nine-year-old stared down at him with a worried wrinkle between his dark brows. Vision swimming, Jim sniffed, and held out his arms in greed and demand.  In response, Spock simply gave another quiet huff, and pulled carefully at Jim until he sat. The motion sent a fine tremor through his body, and the tears that had begun to dry on his face in the midday sun started afresh._

_With nimble fingers, the half Vulcan swept them away, a quiet kind of worry in his childish voice, as he spoke.  “We are still children, Jim, and you are not yet as strong as I, and even I cannot fall from such a height without being injured, just like you.”_

_Clutching at his brother’s hands, Jim sniffled once more, staring down at the thin, crumpled curl of his leg. There, just below the jut of his knee, his sun colored skin was split open. His entire leg hurt, from the scrape on his knee to the shiny, sticky white point of bone that stuck out from his shin and the way it bled and…  Jim just wanted his Dad._

_The adults were in a meeting deep inside the Embassy though, some sort of thing or other that Jim and Spock hadn’t been invited to, and he’d been fine with that. Unsupervised play was the best sort of play, usually, and Jim took whatever chances he could get. It seemed that this would be the last chance he got for quite some time, because Spock had that look on his face, tight and unhappy, with a pout to his lips that he would deny, if mentioned, and Jim knew that look…_

_“You tattled a-already, didn’t you?”_

_His friend had the decency to look shamed then, if only slightly, betrayed by the way that the tips of his pointed ears flushed a brilliant emerald. His dark shock of hair was messed beyond what the Vulcan elders would have preferred, but Jim was used to seeing the black nest atop his friend’s head. It was a comfort, just as the cotton shortsand shirt his friend wore were things that Jim knew by the feel of them, the warm give of them against his skin when Spock hugged him, or decided to humor Jim and nap beside him._

_“Sa-mekh s_ _ensed my distress through our familial bond, Jim.  I am sorry.”_

_Lips cracking open, Jim’s breath was a whimper, but Spock wasn’t to be blamed for giving him away.  Instead, Jim clung to him, hands tight against Spock’s own, and his older friend just accepted the contact between them; the shared pain that he knew Spock felt, because he could see it in the sharp frown between his eyes. Behind them, the doors to the courtyard were flung open, and the thump of heavy footsteps could be heard._

_“Jim!”_

_Eyes wide on Spock, the seven-year-old let out a pained huff, voice wobbling with pain as he spoke._

_“Don’t ever let me climb that thing again.”_

-

“I must admit that I am shocked. This behavior is rather abnormal for you, taking into account your current mental circumstances.”

Lips twisting into a sharp grin, Jim tilted his head back, staring at his friend with bright blue eyes and an uncomfortable flush along his skin. Only Spock would recognize the difference in that coloration, in the tension around his eyes, and Jim saw the way that his friend had picked up on the subtle shifts by the upward slant of his brows and the downward tick of his full mouth.

“Must be my lucky day, then, shocking a Vulcan. Your mother would be so damn proud of me- quick, Spock, shoot her a Comm, let her know of my great feat!”

Fingers grazed along the hem of his shirt and the heavy weight of his satchel thumped against the leg of his cargo shorts, in a steady rhythm with every step that he took.  Beside him, seemingly comfortable in dark jeans and a dark gray tank top –Jim knew for a fact that the fashion choice was due to his own influence, but Spock would never admit it - his brother stood tall, with his face appearing utterly impassive to any passerby.  Jim knew him better than that though; he could see the confusion in the clouds in his eyes, the pinch around his mouth.

“Jim, truly, this behavior is atypical, even for you.”

Childish expression falling then, Jim shrugged, hands stuffed into his pockets. His gaze darted away from Spock’s dark eyes, flitting across the things they passed as they walked, and his teeth began to chew on the inside flesh of his cheek. There was little he could say to that, not when he knew that it was the truth, because even he could feel the ache in his bones, the unease within his gut.

“If you are being coerced into such a meeting, or forced against your will in any other way, I will take immediate action, if you only tell me.”

“You can’t kill him Spock, he’s a doctor.”

“Legal action, then.”

Laughing quietly, a huff of a sound that barely carried on his breath, Jim continued to look about him distractedly yet didn’t startle at the faint brush of fingers across his arm.  Instead, the silent request pulled his attention back to Spock, finding an open, visibly concerned expression.  The lack of control there, in the worried face of his friend, made him cave.

“I’m doing this because I want to Spock, honest. You wouldn’t be walking me to this damn shop, otherwise.”

With any other Vulcan, that answer would have been enough.  Jim’s words would have been taken at face value at least, but they didn’t seem to appease his brother much and, instead, Spock frowned, though it was difficult to tell if the curve of his brows expressed distaste or confusion. Regardless, Jim swayed closer as he walked, bumping the older man’s shoulder with his own, and watched as Spock stumbled enough that his dark hair bounced in the air. It didn’t chase away the frown, but there was less tension in the thin skin around his mouth, and the throbbing vein in his temple stopped its harsh beating.

“I’ll tell you as soon as I feel uncomfortable, and you can come get me. We can take the boys to get dinner, so you can make sure we’re all eating, right?”

The back of Spock’s hand brushed his bare arm, and he wondered for a moment what the other felt along his skin. His nerves, his worry or the fearful gnawing in his stomach that made him feel sick? Perhaps the steadfast, brave bullheadedness that had gotten him into so much trouble on Tarsus, as much as it had kept him alive. There was nothing to show on Spock’s face though and instead, his dark eyes were seeking Jim’s, warm in their affection and concern.

“Do you promise me this, Jim?”

Nodding, reaching out to tap his fingers twice against the inside of Spock’s wrist, Jim gave a soft smile.

“Promise.”

_-_

“So, I don’t generally do this sort of thing.”

Surely, work had kept Leonard on his toes, as all Doctors usually looked more than a little worn around the edges. That had been the only reason Jim could find as to _why_ the other man hadn’t contacted him in the weeks that had followed that first informal meeting. Doctors pulled long hours, from what he knew, and there must have been something keeping him busy. The conceited part of him liked to think that Leonard had just decided that he couldn’t handle him, while the lonely ache in Jim’s mind whispered quietly that it was probably for the best, then.

He was a bag full of issues, with almost more scars than skin and silent night terrors filling the spaces left empty, with screams that never fell from his lips and tears that clogged his throat and washed his face.  He knew exactly what his problems were: Jim had a long-suffering, patient psychologist because he could hear the screaming voices still, just like he could feel phantom fingers on his skin, and those were things that he knew would probably never really go away. Besides, he had children, two little boys that could have been as messed up as him, and he didn’t dare put his heart on the line, not when the two of them held it.

So he ignored the silence of his Comm, and went about his week.  A shuffle of classes that brought an ungodly amount of reading; that required discussion boards, and long conversations with people that he generally tended to not like. Two shifts at the shop hadn’t done much to fill his time, but they’d gotten him out of the house and into the public enough for him to remember why, exactly, he had such a problem with people. And then, miraculously, his Comm had gone off - thankfully in the break between classes - and Jim had stared down at the message with raised brows and a quiet sigh.

He probably should have mentioned how much he hated coffee.

It would have been a good idea, actually, because then he wouldn’t have been sitting here, in the very shop he worked in.  He knew exactly how little the large, plush chairs were cleaned, and he knew just how they made their food behind those swinging double doors. Their coffee was made from a replicator, though no one would ever believe him if he told them and, really, just because it looked clean didn’t mean he could say much for the state the kitchen or of their bathroom.

There was no coffee in his hands, no hot chocolate or steaming tea. Jim knew exactly how much effort the replicator put into those drinks, and how often the machine was cleaned. Instead, his fingers wrapped around the cool neck of a water bottle, having been stuffed into his bag alongside a datapadd and a few snack bars- one from habit, and one for company should his date not show.

 “I don’t understand what you mean by this…   _thing_?” 

Except, Leonard _had_ shown up, prompt as any Vulcan Jim had ever known, and he’d been led to one of the chairs in the corner with a smile. Seated across from him, with a cup of coffee –Americano, actually, and Jim’s nose burned from the smell of it- and a discarded pack of sugar on the table, bright hazel eyes stared at him, more than a bit confused. At least he wore a proper shirt this time around, with actual sleeves in a nice burgundy color; jeans, too.

Taking a sip from his bottle, Jim watched as the coffee mug clanked quietly when Leonard set it back on the table.

“This.  This _thing_ we’re doing, it’s…  a ‘thing’.”

Nodding to himself, as if that made all the sense in the world, Leonard’s expression still seemed to disagree. The older man’s brow furrowed, thin mouth pursing into a sharp line- ah, he probably should have explained himself more clearly, then.  Still, Leonard cleared his throat, cupping his hands together on the table before him to watch Jim talk.

“You’re going to have to explain that one, darlin’.”

An endearment, of all things.  Sharp and sweet, a shiver stole down his spine, unlike anything Jim had ever felt before, and that was something, wasn’t it? That sudden ache within his bones, the empty yearning between his fingers that he didn’t know what to do with, that was Leonard’s fault. The man _did_ that, just by sitting there with his bright eyes and soft hair, and made Jim want to _touch_ ... to see what the texture of his tattoos felt like beneath Jim’s fingertips, to taste the salt of his skin with his lips, feel him shiver with his tongue.

Shame was a brilliant, burning thing that he was more than used to, but sexual shame- that was something else entirely.

Coloring, embarrassed, Jim felt the way that Leonard watched him like a heavy pet across his skin, and he licked his lips in a nervous manner, only for the man’s gaze to follow the motion, too.

“Dating, I don’t do tha- this isn’t one, a date. This isn’t a date, because I don’t do- _stop looking at me like that!_ ”

He hadn’t meant to snap so, he’d tried to keep his words calm and he’d practiced this very speech in his mirror. But Leonard’s gaze burned him, bright and beckoning, and Jim felt his skin heat from the inside. He wasn’t used to this sort of thing, didn’t understand what was going on, because he wasn’t sick, he knew that but the building fever in his blood said otherwise, didn’t it? So he hissed, words a slithering snap, and watched as Leonard’s eyeswidened, and the man leaned back, hands raised slightly in submission.

A deep breath through his nose, his fingers had tightened around the neck of his water bottle, and the plastic crackled loudly when he released it once more. Dented and seamed now, his nails caught on the edges when he nervously tried to smooth it, and wide blue eyes dropped from Leonard to the bottle. They only held there for a moment, before Jim turned his attention away entirely, focusing instead on the line that had formed at the counter.

“Jim?”

Leonard’s voice was soft, hesitant in a way that it hadn’t been before, and Jim huffed. The man didn’t try to touch him though, didn’t try to push the conversation further along.  Instead, he just waited, a patient presence across from where he sat, and it seemed that _that_ was what he needed most.

“I don’t date, because I can’t - I _don’t_ feel sexual attraction to people. People don’t… _do_ things for me, unless they’re- I have to know them. I have to know who they are, how their mind works, and the-their intentions and goals, or I can’t-“

Flustered, words failing him, Jim’s fingers tightened on the bottle once more. Across from him though, Leonard took a deep breath, eyes still wide even though his face was patient now, mouth parted just enough to show the line of his teeth. There was something different in his eyes, a softness around them, and Jim watched him as he gave a slow nod.

“Demi-sexuality, textbook-wise, at least. You have to be connected to a person on a mental and emotional level, or your body doesn’t experience the proper chemical reaction to induce arousal. It’s psychosomatic, mostly, and it’s not a defect by any means, but…”

Pausing, as if for breath, Leonard watched him, saw the way that Jim’s fingers worried across the dented plastic, and his own clenched as if in answer. For a moment, Jim sat with bated breath, scared that Leonard would try to reach out for him to still his fingers. The man simply swallowed though, silently slotting his knuckles together.

“I pushed you with this, didn’t I? Made you feel uncomfortable?”

Silence stretched between them, Jim staring at him with wide, unguarded eyes, even while Leonard sighed back. There was something resigned then, in the line of the man’s broad shoulders, and Jim wanted to smooth it out with his fingers, chase it away until that tension didn’t exist. Instead, bottle clattering on the table, he dropped his hands to his lap, fisting them in the fabric of his shorts.

With that, he nodded, and watched how Leonard sagged in his chair.

“Fuck, Jimmy, I didn’t mean t’-damn it.”

Bruising a hand over his mouth, Leonard sighed through his teeth, and the same near-exhaustion that had dropped him, the frustrated, self-deprecating nerves that had settled into the line of his shoulders and the light in his eyes melted away before Jim’s eyes. Pulling himself back upright, Leonard gave him a small smile, more hesitant than the last one had been, and yet there was something hopeful curling at the edges of his lips.

“Do you think you might want me, if you got to know me?”

“I-“

That was what that feeling in his blood was though, wasn’t it? That bubble of _want_ that had started to simmer, that boiling in his gut that had just barely started to heat.  His muscles quivered, and his body ached for something that he didn’t know, but Jim had a feeling that yeah, Leonard was right. He wanted the older man, or at least, he maybe could, if he let himself get to know the Doctor.

“I want to.”

The hesitant smile that those three words evoked from Leonard was beautiful, simple as it was, and Jim felt the phantom desire to smooth his thumb along the taut line of his bottom lip. His smile brought out the fire in his hazel eyes, eased the tired shadows beneath them. He looked younger then, less beaten down and, suddenly, Jim wondered what it would be like to wake up next to that face.

“Then let me be your friend, please?  I’ll wait however long I need.”

The burning in his chest was different then, nothing like the thing that he had identified as shame, earlier. It was sharper, coiling around his heart and lungs to fill them with a sticky smoke. It wasn’t the same at all; it was sweet like molasses and thick like syrup, turning his breath into candy floss while his mind spun sharply.

Breathless, Jim worried his lips together and felt a new flush spread across his cheeks, climbing up from the line of his throat to lick at his ears. His fingers jittered for a moment within his lap before he snapped them together, fingers laced tightly to keep himself from plucking at something or clawing at his own skin and his confused nerves.

Leonard was so patient though, with his soft hazel eyes and his earnest smile; it focused on Jim’s own bitten mouth, while his lips buzzed from the abuse he’d given them only moments before. Still, his cheeks dimpled faintly, he could feel it where they pulled, and his shoulders rose in a small shrug.

“You might be waiting a long time, Bones.”

Hazel eyes widened sharply, and Leonard’s mouth formed the name slowly, brows pulling down in confusion. He didn’t seem to mind the nickname though, even if Jim himself hadn’t been prepared to say such a thing.  It fit though, felt more appropriate than calling him _Leonard_ and, already, that was a step in what Jim hoped was the right direction. From the quiet laugh the older man gave, he must have felt the same.

“Be completely honest, darlin’?  I feel like I could wait an eternity for you, and not mind a day of it.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greetings lovelies~   
> I did warn you about slow updates, did I not? Life's been running at full speed away from me these last few months, and with my Beta-lovely also terribly busy, I'm afraid personal writing got put on the wayside! That being said, while updates will still be slow, they won't be as bad as this one has been. So, enjoy your chapter darling, I think you've deserve it after this long of a wait!  
>  **TW: there is assault in the first segment of this chapter, though it is glazed over and condensed into a pg version. The initial, non-pg version will possibly be posted as an out-take at a later date.**

Mother of Mercy, please watch over us in this time of trouble.  
We know not the path that you plan for us, sweet Mother, but we place our hands within yours.  
Guide us with the righteousness that you intend, and we shall be gentled beneath your everlasting light.  
We ask that you keep us safe, sweet Mother, despite the forces that would work against us.  
Lead us to salvation, O Mother, and we shall sing songs of your praise for many generations to come.

_Atimeh-Yna and Al-Halelmas’ voices rang in his ears, the soothing, crooning tones of their prayer lying heavy on his heart. He knew them intimately after hours, days, weeks of hearing such words of praise, and it burned now. It seemed so empty to his ears, and for every word that he heard, he felt the weight of the children he carried and the hunger within his stomach._

_There was no God, just as there was no Goddess, to keep them safe. There was no Mother or Father that meant to hold their hands and lead them from the darkness. No merciful Elder existed in the cosmos to speak softly whispered words of salvation to them from lips unseen._

_Star Fleet had abandoned them, their families were dead, and Tarsus was dying around them a little more every day._

_Eyes shut tight against the burning bright ceiling lights, there was a different kind of fire on his skin, acid bright and teetering on the cusp of something that could devour him. There were hands on his shoulders, thick fingered and heavy, crushing as much as they forcefully guided him for what they wanted._

_He’d get them food for this, enough that his children would be able to eat and survive for a few more weeks. It was worth it, just to keep them safe. Still, even with their prayer ringing in his hears, Jim gagged._

_“Open those eyes.”_

_Gut churning, lungs tight, Jim cracked his eyes open slowly. Past the grit of dirt and tears, the layer of sweat that had collected on his skin dripped down and stung sharply. His vision wavered, blurred from his shame and his tears, the man slowly coming into view. He was just as dirty as Jim, but there was no hunger on his bones, no sharpness to his jaw or the crest of his shoulders. Instead, he had meat on him, around his throat and within the muscles of his arms. He was fed, he was fit, and there was a harsh sort of strength along his fingers when he fisted a hand in the dirty, greasy gold of Jim’s hair._

_The grip on his wrists pulled him back though, threatening to wrench a shoulder from its socket, and his scream clawed its way free before he could even think to stop it. A thick hand grabbed at his chin then, fingers pressing bone-breaking bruises into the starvation-sharp hinge of his jaw, and his gaunt cheeks were pressed tighter still when the man stretched his face. His arms were released, but with his back forced into a sharp arch, his hands scrabbled on the ground below to try and support himself._

Mother of Mercy, please watch over us in this time of trouble.  
We know not the path that you plan for us, sweet Mother, but we place our hands within yours.  
Guide us with the righteousness that you intend, and we shall be gentled beneath your everlasting light.  
We ask that you keep us safe, sweet Mother, despite the forces that would work against us.  
Lead us to salvation, O Mother, and we shall sing songs of your praise for many generations to come.

-

He’d come up from sleep gagging, throat quivering tight and the burn of stomach acid licking its way swiftly up the back of his tongue. Already, as if they had settled there earlier in the night, the thick scented taste of flesh pressed to his taste buds, and it was all he knew. Burning, cloying ash thick and decay-sweet like the mass graves; it filled his nose and mouth as if he had breathed through his teeth.

There was no delicate way to vomit, not when he had come up swinging in his sleep, not when the soft stretch of his blankets had felt like something else. Soft cotton had turned into heavy handed grasps instead, the harsh press of palms along his flanks and the jagged drag of nails across the line of his spine, his hips. Finger pads pressed decadently against his throat like he deserved them, and Jim couldn’t even cry out at the memory of it. Instead he simply felt it, the phantom feeling of touches that didn’t belong, burning against his skin.

They’d almost carried him on unsteady, swift feet to the bathroom where he had then collapsed, fingers clutching at the rim of the toilet.

Slumped beside it, his back had rippled with the harsh pulls of his stomach turning itself inside out, and Jim had started to sob part way through it all. His throat was filled with liquid fire then, and there was no keeping quiet, not when it felt like his intestines were trying to forcibly crawl out of their cage in his abdomen, and he just gripped the toilet tighter. Head resting against the cool porcelain, skin pulling tight and uncomfortable across his bones, there was no chance for soft breathing, for calming himself.

Instead, breaths were harsh pulls from between gaping lips, and his cries were ragged things. They slipped, slimy and sleek from between the catch of his teeth, and there was nothing left to catch them. Lungfuls of bile-sour air only made it worse, and he twisted away from the toilet then, curling low on the floor. Forehead pressed to the cool tiles, thighs tight against his chest as if he could compress his lungs for slower, shallower pulls of air, Jim’s mouth became the source of a keening, mournful sound. One hand found purchase in his hair, pulling hard and persistent at the short strands while the other curled five bruising points into his ribs. In the small space where he had made a home for himself, Jim could only form a rhythm of small rocking motions, narrow and aborted as they were, and his tears dripped onto the white floor beneath him.

“Oh, Daddy.”

Little fingers on his back set his skin into motion once more, and Jim curled away from the touch before he could help himself. Those soft, fingertip touches turned into a little palm, then a whole hand, and Jim heard the rattling as Thomas stood up on the tips of his toes and flushed the toilet. His son then fell to sit beside him on the cool floor, slight hands pushing until he could ease Jim’s fingers away from the clutch of his hair. Instead, he soothed his own thin-boned digits through the strands, like Jim had done for them both countless times.

“Kevy, get the wipies out of the cubby.”

Chuckling wetly, Jim went with the motion of his head being lifted and settled into his eldest’s lap; let Thomas shift him as he wanted. Minute hands pushed at his shoulder, and he tipped with them until he was curled on his side on the floor. The lights were bright and he squinted against them, focusing instead on the halo of dark hair around his son’s face.

Small mouth pulled into a tight frown, there were creases from his pillow on his son’s cheek and temple, knots in his dark hair. His chest was bare, and from the looks of it his sleep pants were on backwards. Strange, Jim didn’t remember putting sleep pants on him before bed, Thomas complaining that it was hot in his room.

“Lights at thirty percent, please.”

The bathroom dimmed then, and he could see more clearly the sleep that still crusted around Thomas’ eyes. Reaching up with shaking fingers, he carefully smoothed a knot from the side of his son’s head, and he smiled when Thomas turned his head into the touch. His throat hurt, voice crackling around the edges from abuse, and his thick tongue licked at the edges of his lips.

“Did I wake you?”

Kevin bobbled into view then, and Jim sighed quietly, holding out his arms for his youngest to burrow close. There was a stain from drool on Kevin’s chin, crackling powder white from the dip of his lips, and he dusted it away with his thumb. His son’s breath was tacky from sleep and juice from before bed, but Jim took it with a quiet acceptance.

Just the same, he kept still when Kevin pulled one of the baby wipes out of its container and smeared it across his face, cleaning away the residual bile that had clung to his mouth.

Their little faces were serious when they peered down at him though, and he sighed, slowly scrubbing his fingers through his hair before bruising them over his eyes. It was difficult to tell, with his mental clock still spinning out of control and his skin feeling stretched thing, but he would guess that it was closer to midnight than it was morning, if the bags under his sons’ eyes meant anything.

“Do we need to get auntie Sasiss?”

He shook his head at them, pushing himself until he sat up between them. Kevin cradled in his lap, Thomas plastered to his side, Jim smacked his lips together and glanced between the two of them. Both were wide awake when he would have rather they had never woken up in the first place, and their eyes were bright and bleary on him.

“Uncle Spock?”

“No, no don’t-there’s no need for that. Daddy’s fine.”

Pressed against him, he felt when Kevin’s fingers flexed on his shirt, little knuckles cracking against his ribs. There was a tremble from somewhere between them, but he couldn’t tell whose skin and spine it started from. Instead, he wrapped his arms around the both of them, holding tight for a moment before he released them with a staggering sigh.

“Go to bed, boys. I-I’ll be a minute, okay?”

They didn’t believe him, judging from the furrows between their brows and the puckers of their mouths, but they nodded at him all the same. Pulling away from him, Kevin scrambled away on jelly legs, and Jim waited until he heard him scuttle into his bedroom to pull himself up to his knees. Thomas still stood beside him though, dark eyes knowing and something grim on his face. He held his hand out, palm up and silently demanding and Jim sighed, holding one of his own out in return.  

Little fingers tapped twice at the thin skin on the inside of his wrist, hesitant, and Jim felt himself choke. Emotion wet and hot in his throat, his smile wobbled, eyes burning.

“Yeah, Daddy’s okay Germ.” Twisting his hand, he held Thomas’ fingers for a minute before giving his son a gentle push. “Go on.”

Fingers curling on the edge of the sink once the kid was gone, Jim leaned heavily on it and stared at his reflection for a long minute. There were no finger bruises along his skin, no pulling marks from where nails had dug along his flesh. He was spotless, essentially, and he was fine.

That didn’t stop him from staring though, as if he were waiting for his reflection to start to wither and decay before his eyes, and the words on his lips burned.

“Mother of Mercy, please watch over us in this time of trouble. We know not the path that you plan for us, sweet Mother, but we place our hands within yours. Guide us with the righteousness that you intend, and we shall be gentled beneath your everlasting light. We ask that you keep us safe, sweet Mother, despite the forces that would work against us. Lead us to salvation, O Mother, and we shall sing songs of your praise for many generations to come.”

-

Jaw cracking on a yawn, Jim rapped his knuckles against the soft skin of his temple, the flare of pain there pulling his eyes open wide. Thirty rows down, the seminar course was full, brimming with more people than he ever saw at one given time in a room, otherwise, and a near-hush had fallen over the lot of them. That quiet, stifling and heavy, served only to make his eyelids droop, settling like a damp blanket upon his skin. There was no real way to fight it, not when his belly was full from a hastily eaten lunch and the room was hot, the air sticky and humid.

One leg folded beneath him, the joint of his hip pinched in a tight pull and he shifted his weight, pressing harder into the ache. The pain was bright, burning sweet and precise, and he used it like the tool that it was. Strange, sad even, how survival skills were necessary to keep from falling asleep in a lecture. Was this what his life had come to?

“Now, if you could all turn to page six hundred twenty-four in the text, we’ll continue by discussing the principle qualities of the Tauveer social hierarchy. This information will be fundamental for furthering your understanding of not only the foundation for their philosophy, but also why their daily life relied so heavily upon their ancestral teachings even when their society started its fall.”

Scrubbing his fingers along the stubble that coated his jaw, Jim flicked at his PADD until the right page glared back at him. Eyes narrowing on the words though, he knew them, had read them previously before the class had even began just for the sake of having something to read while his sons took their nap. There was nothing for him to read now then, no reason for him to actually be in lecture today, and he snorted after a moment, glancing to his side only to frown sharply. Foot scooting out, the toe of his shoe nudged against his friend’s calf, but Hikaru didn’t do much other than snuffle in his sleep.

“Fucker.”

Word nothing more than a whisper, Jim sighed, glancing away from his friend to stare down at the front of the lecture hall. Either Gromek hadn’t noticed the slip yet though, or the woman didn’t care as much as she should have, but Jim wasn’t going to draw the situation to her attention. Instead, leaning over, he flicked at the face of Hikaru’s PADD until it came to life. Tapping at it, gaze darting between the device and the Admiral in the front of the room, Jim only leaned back once he’d set the record function on the PADD to run.

“You owe me, Sulu.”

Wriggling in his seat for a moment, bottom lip caught between the bite of his teeth, Jim contemplated sitting on his hands. They weren’t supposed to text in class, no messaging systems or other programs of the sort, not when Gromek swore up and down that she would know. There was no way to fool her, not when she’d been an Admiral for longer than most of them had been alive except _that-_ that sounded like a challenge.

That sounded like a challenge, and James Kirk had a problem with challenges.

Frustration sounding low in his throat, he pulled his PADD to him, balancing it near the edge of the long, curved lecture desk. Fingers swiping across the screen, he tapped until the logarithm for his favored messenger game up, and scowled at it. Eyes scanning quickly through the lines and lines of code, he curled down a little in his seat, one leg bouncing quickly off of the floor until he found the strand that he wanted. Fingers spanning over the sample then, he highlighted the necessary sequence that would ping an alert through Gromek’s firewalls and deleted it.

Knuckles cracked when he kneaded them harshly against his thighs before exiting the mainframe. Tommy and Kevin’s faces grinned back at him then, from the home screen, all bright eyes and dirt smeared on their baby-fat cheeks. Tracing a finger nail carefully over the curve of their faces, Jim stared at the picture for a long moment before caving and clicking on the little icon for his messaging program.

_Do I have to stay in lecture if I’ve already read the material?_

Double checking to make sure that the alert sound was off, Jim settled back in his seat, determined not to stare at the PADD. Instead, he watched as Gromek paced, her gray bob swishing with every pass. She seemed far more intent on Tauveer culture than he would have anticipated, but he shut her out with a quiet hum.

His PADD blinked to life after five minutes of him filtering her voice in hopes of ignoring her all together, and Jim barely refrained from scrambling for it. Instead, slowly, like he would for turning an electric page, he smoothed a finger across the screen to bring up the message.

_That depends on if you’re going to play hookie with me or not._

_Don’t you work?_

He was cheeky and charming, and Jim shook his head faintly.

“Kirk!”

Tensing, face swinging up, Jim blinked wide blue eyes at the woman who stood, tall and proud at the front of the lecture hall. There was a sharp twist to her lips, something that he couldn’t recognize, and he wanted to slink away. Sink down into his seat, disappear under the desk, but he was too old for games like that.

“Ma’am?”

She’d trained the habit of rubbernecking out of them already, thankfully, so only her scrutinizing stare stayed hooked onto him. That was more than enough, but Jim met her gaze for the challenge that it was. If he was going to be punished, he might as well own up to it, Star Fleet had no room for liars.

“Would you do me the honor of explaining why Tauveer priests put such necessity on the worship of the ancestral bones?”

Teeth baring for a moment in startled frustration, his skin was hot, uncomfortably flushed from more than just the bright lecture hall lights. He couldn’t scowl at her though, even as his teeth clacked together, and better yet, there was no need to. Instead, he cleared his throat, sitting straighter in his seat and curling his fingers around the edge of his PADD when it lit up.

“They didn’t.”

“And why do you say that, Mr. Kirk?”

Anxiety was familiar, bubbling and bitter in his gut, and it threatened to crawl up the line of his throat, spill liquid from between the cage of his teeth. Jim used it like the tool that it was though, squaring his shoulders and pulling at the quick, rabbit paced frenzy that his mind had taken, a slow breath through his nose the only chance of preparing himself that he had.

“Tauveer priests didn’t encourage the worship of ancestral bones among the rest of the pieces that the citizens used in their shrines. The translation that we’re given says that the priests considered them to be sanctified, but if you pay attention to the rest of the text surrounding that phrase, the connotation doesn’t add up. If _sanctified_ was a metonym for _malodorous_ or _scatological_ , then sure, I understand why that mistake could be made. All accounts that mention the use of the bones for worship come from either private shrines found in the remains of houses, or from the scripture pieces found in public graves, whereas the temples that the priests lived in didn’t have a single bone in them.”

Her hands had fallen from where they were crossed over her chest to rest on the curves of her hips, and Gromek watched him with a sharp look on her aged face. By now, more than half of his lecture mates had decided to ignore her rubbernecking rule, turning instead to stare at him with varying expressions ranging from awe to frustration.

“What would you call it then, if the priests didn’t condone it?”

Beside him, Hikaru had woken up, though he stayed slouched over in his seat. Jim could feel his friend’s black eyes on him, sleep bleary but bright. The way he’d noticed the other man’s change in breathing was the only thing that kept him from jerking out of his chair when Hikaru reached over, planting a hand on Jim’s jiggling knee to stop the nervous motion.

“The best comparison we have for it would be an archaic form of paganism-“

“So you’re claiming that the Tauveer were polytheistic? That seems rather ambitious, Mr Kirk, wouldn’t one God be enough?”

“I didn’t say that,” Unable to help himself, his tone was sharp, and Jim closed his eyes then, mulling over his words while glancing down at his PADD.

_Pulled a double yesterday with the emergency clinic, I’m off for the next 48._

He didn’t smile, though it was a near thing, and instead, Jim curled his fingers tighter around the PADD, pulling it into his lap to cradle it close.

“I didn’t say that. By comparing them to a form of paganism isn’t to say that they were polytheistic or monotheistic- not only do we have no way of knowing that, but it would be a dishonor to their philosophy and religion to falsely claim something for a people who died over two thousand years ago. What I meant, by comparing them to paganism, is that the citizens use of bones in their daily worship seems to have gone against the form of practice that the priests wished to encourage. So they would have been seen as heretics, witch doctors for a lack of a better word, and the priests probably tried to pull them away from this practice for sanitary reasons, since the oldest dating exposed bones that we have record of in the household’s still show signs of bacterial diseases.”

In the front of the room, there was a brilliant, splitting grin on Gromek’s face, exposing the sharp, double rows of her pointed teeth. If he hadn’t wanted to disappear beneath his desk before, he did then, and from beside him, Hikaru let out a startled, choking sound.

“How are your boys, Jim?”

Oh.

_Oh._

She knew his sons, because she knew his dad. Gromek knew how old he was, and Gromek knew his name out of what was easily one of the largest, upper level, lecture groups that she had, because she’d seen him before. Thin faced and hollow eyed in his Dad’s office or exhausted, complaining about his midterms from last semester while he draped himself nearly full body across the man’s desk. She’d seen him enough to know who he was, to recognize his voice or his face, and that was more comforting than he’d anticipated, unexpected as it was.

“They’re good, ma’am. I-“  Star Fleet didn’t have any room for liars, but they said nothing about being resourceful. They encouraged it, actually, and Jim reminded himself of that then, refusing to feel guilty for the words that spilled from his mouth. “I missed an email from their doctor’s office, actually, requesting that I come in immediately.”

If she knew his Dad well enough to know Jim’s name, then she’d seen pictures of his sons, had probably heard Chris talk about them more than once. 

“I don’t see why you don’t go then, since you obviously have a firm grasp on our current reading. I expect you to come to my office if you have any questions.”

“Of course, ma’am.  Thank you, ma’am.”

-

“Lemme get this straight, Jimbo.”  Hazel eyes bright and crinkled with amusement, there was laughter on Bones’ lips and ketchup on his cheek, caught in the dark of his short beard. “You used me as an excuse to get out of a lecture on Touvar-“

“Tauveer.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, name still sounds like hogwash no matter how much you gurgle it.  Don’t look no better just because you spit it pretty.”

Grinning, Jim took a bite from his burger, watching as his companion waved a sweet potato fry at him accusingly. There was an ease there that he hadn’t expected; a sort of soft, simple banter that they’d fallen into almost instantly after his initial melt down. No pressure for something more, even though he could still see that fire in Bones’ eyes, burning hot and sweet at his exposed skin and instead, the man seemed sated with smiles and laughter, with the rapid movement of Jim’s hands as he spoke and the tumble of his words from chapped lips.

“Well, when you put it that way.”

Gruff laughter spilled from the other side of their booth, tucked away from the diner’s main counter. Pressed against a part of the low hanging window that made the store front, burgundy vinyl stuck to the backs of his knees where sweat had pooled earlier, and the table was just a bit sticky beneath the sharp point press of his elbows on it. Sunlight shone bright through the finger-print smeared glass; it traced across the smooth lines of Bones’ tattoos, drawing Jim’s eyes back to them time and time again.

Funny, he’d never wanted to lick somebody before.

“You’re such a shit, you know that, Jimbo? Lying to a professor like tha-“

“Okay, okay! One, I didn’t like and tw- _stop waving that fucking potato at me, Bones_! Two, Gromek is an Admiral, not a professor. Star Fleet encourages resourcefulness in their recruits!”

“Uh huh.”

The offending fry was waved at him once more, waggled limply in the air. Scowling, watching it with narrowed eyes, the grin on Bones’ face was a charming, thin stretch. His tank top dipped low, exposing the crest of his pectoral muscles and the dip of his clavicles even if it shadowed the rest of his torso with its loose grey folds.

“The ability to remove one’s self from an undesired, potentially hostile situation is something that cadets are taught during their survival tactic courses at the introductory level, as well as a principle pillar in diplomatic deep space interactions. Wartime theorem courses also depend on the students resourcefulness- there’s never a situation you can’t get out of, you just have to know your enemy. Just because they have more fire power than you doesn’t mean anything, not if you can convince them enough that they don’t call your bluff. A Klingon’s not going to take tempered, diplomatic responses when they hail you from a War Bird with phaser canons charged full and locked. You have to outmatch him vigor for vigor, bust his balls, because otherwise he’ll own yours.”

His hand stopped waving, and Bones blinked at him. Leaning forward, Jim bit at the sweet potato fry, pulling it from between Bones thick knuckled fingers to eat it himself. There was no point in wasting food, and he was already going to be sick later, could feel it in the bubble low in his gut, the hollow feeling in his abdomen. The feeling of fingers on his skin was too fresh, the memory of something in his throat too raw, but he needed to eat at least _something_.

Bones just stared at him though, past furrowed brows and dark, soft beard. There was ketchup on his cheek, crumbs from his food in his beard around his mouth, and a faint stain from something like toothpaste on his shoulder. He was comfortable in that recently rumpled, rolled out of bed kind of way, and Jim hid his smile behind the heavy weight of his burger.

Teeth clicking, throat working, Bones shifted forward in his seat; vinyl creaking where it tried to grip at his legs, table quivering slightly when he rested his weight on one elbow. Fingers curling at his ear, cheek in palm, and his free hand scrubbed over his mouth, bruising his lips and shaking the crumbs free. Chewing thoughtfully, his own expression slowly fell with the intensity in the other man’s gaze, and Jim cleared his throat, nerves sending a familiar tremble through his muscles.

“Bones?”

He smiled then, faintly, like he wanted to hold it in, and Bones’ words were soft, carefully selected.

“I ain’t pressuring you for anything, Jimmy, but just- you’re beautiful, and you don’t even know it.”

“Oh,”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tada, fairy dust! I'm not sure, don't ask me, I'm a little tired and excited to get this chapter out to all of you. So, here you go lovelies, some romance is starting up on the fringes, finally, after seven whole chapters, and we're starting to get into the thick of things! Enjoy!

The clock on the wall was ticking so quietly that it was damn near silent, a constant _tick tick tick_ that settled on his skin.

He shouldn’t have been able to hear it, really, shouldn’t have been able to catch the subtle, steady sound of movement from behind him. There were a lot of things that he shouldn’t have been able to sense, like the way that the chair beneath him had leeched away what pieces of his warmth that it could find, or how his fingernails fit into the grooves that had been worn into the soft leather.  Practice kept him sitting still, over-exposed to the atmosphere around him and far too used to the light that streamed through the windows, and the soft waft of her perfume where it drifted from her pale, winter-mint skin.

“Jim.”

Thelin was a patient woman, excelled at her job, but there was something unsettling about the way his own skin reacted then, no matter how comfortable he felt with her.  Everything felt raw; too tight and too small and he felt the desire to dig his nails into his own skin rather than the abused, supple leather. There would be just as much give, just as much pull and take, only he would bleed where the chair didn’t.

The rush of blood within his ears was becoming deafening, all consuming and noiseless all at once, encompassing until it was just as necessary as the quiet sound of his own breathing, the _scritch_ of his fingertips against the leather. He could taste his own panic on his tongue, bitter and base, and he could feel every imperfection. Every flaw within himself, from the crook his grin would take were it present, to the way that the knuckles of his fingers didn’t quite line up - broken one too many times and never set right. The empty gnawing of his belly where he hadn’t been able to eat, the heavy weight of every scar that he could feel then, could nearly count.

His throat clicked, teeth clenching, and Jim sat stiff in his chair.

This feeling had presided beneath his skin for hours, days, dug in deep since that innocent afternoon spent in a sticky booth with Bones. The man’s laughter had soothed his lungs only to leave them raw in its absence, and his head had yet to stop pounding. He had done this to himself, surely, wrecked by one simple, soft revelation that he didn’t know what to do with, and _there_ , that. That was it, the root of all of this, the cause of this discourse that his scientist’s mind couldn’t wrap around; _there_ was the start of everything and the end of anything.

“I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s going on, Jim.”

But she knew, surely. He could see it in the soft white sheen of her eyes when his gaze found hers, knew it from the catch in her voice and the ache within his own chest. What sort of line was there left to be crossed, when a psychologist became a friend, when the notion of professionalism didn’t seem quite so set in stone anymore? He knew her laughter just like he knew his own, and knew the sound of her bare feet on her office floor, the way that she would curl in on herself in her chair. Years of exposure, and yet he knew just as little of her as he knew of himself.

Some things were certain though, unavoidable for the way that they resonated within him, and he found that he ached. His body hurt in a way it hadn’t before, yearned for something that he didn’t know how to accept, didn’t know if he could give. He was going to make himself sick if he kept at this, surely, but there was nothing within himself that he could retain or retch, belly an empty, yawning chasm from where he had yet to eat. Everything was empty, but that hollow pulse inside hungered; demanded something he had never known before.

“I want to be beautiful.”

Bones had called him that, so soft and hushed, as if he hadn’t expected to say the words. Such earnestness, a soft burning, and there had been such light in the man’s eyes, such knowing. As if he had foreseen the trouble that such words would cause, the sort of thoughts that they would put in Jim’s head. He had never been beautiful, had never known himself to be anything other than _Jim_ , but he wanted. He wanted then, longed to be something that he didn’t know if he could be, and what was this?

Thelin frowned at his admission, the steadfast cadence of his voice, and she didn’t seem to know what to make of his words for a moment. Funny, that made two of them who were flustered by the things that he said, torn to pieces by words that he didn’t really understand.

“Jim, did something happen?”

Slowly, he nodded, glacial blue gaze wavering on the wall behind her for a brief moment.

She was patient though, and with her hands folded in her lap, legs tucked beneath her, Thelin waited. There was nothing else to do, because even he himself waited, searching for the words that he needed from somewhere inside of himself. For all of his knowledge, all of his learning, the things that he needed came slowly to him, as if he had to pull them from some deep, untouched place, and Jim gave a quiet, questioning hum at his own hesitance.

“Bones, _Leonard,_ called me beautiful. And I’m not, not really, because I’ve-I’ve seen things, and I’ve _done_ things. But…”

Grunting, licking at his chapped lips, Jim floundered. There were so many things to say, thoughts swirling uninhibited then within himself. As if a dam had opened, he knew that there were things that he wanted, needed, yet it felt like only a shadow of the things that he could know.

“But I want to be.  Bones just…he called me beautiful, and he told me he didn’t want anything from me for it. Just that he thought I needed to know. But I want to be beautiful, and I want to introduce him to my Dad, and I want to hold his hand an-and I…I want to kiss him. I _want_ to.”

The tension that had spread between them became thin then, barely a wisp, and he felt what remained of it be banished by her soft exhale. There was relief in the sudden lack of lines between her eyes, softness to her features once more, and the smile she gave him seemed proud.

“Good, Jim. That’s really, really good. Why don’t you tell me about him?”

He could do that.

-

“You can do that.”

Voice lisp thick and heavy from behind her fangs, Sasiss’ toxic eyes narrowed on him until only thin slits of yellow could be seen past her dark lashes. Hair pulled back into a thick, bobbing tail at the top of her head, the calico female watched him with a curious, well meant sort of contempt, and he recognized the look for what it was. A challenge as much as a question, and he stretched leisurely, slipping down a little more in his chair, head rolling to watch her where she sat.

The afternoon sun was warm, a breath of relief from the cool, crisp near-winter chill that had recently fallen over much of San Francisco. Warm enough for shorts once more, despite the way that the leaves on all the trees had turned already turned vibrant, fleeting colors that faded into browns and blacks as they fell. Fall was upon them and nearly over, yet the Indian summer rush had come somewhere from the desert, hot as it made everything.

It wouldn’t last more than a few days, surely, but his strange family seemed content to take advantage of the chance they’d been given all the same.

One delicately clawed hand reached out to take another cherry tomato, but Spock just moved the bowl away from her, dark eyes narrowed slightly on the Caitian in challenge. The Vulcan lifted one brow, but she just purred at him, a low rumble of laughter even as she lurched forward in her chair. Ten minutes of peace, and already the two of them were at it, with the table rocking beneath their antics as Spock jerked the bowl further away from her questing fingers.

“Jim can accomplish whatever task he sets his mind to.” Catching his drink with both hands as their female companion let out a crackling, unintelligible complaint, Jim watched as Spock conceded, pulling the bowl of tomatoes into his lap for safe keeping before holding up a hand for silence. “However, that being said, I do not see the necessity in persuading him to pursue the man, since he is already set on such a course.”

“There is nothing wrong in giving him tips on what to do with a cock.”

Neck cracking as he tipped backward, a quick check to find just where his children were, Jim relaxed upon the sight of them. Distracted with Nyota across the yard, Kevin clung to the ebony woman with wide eyes and a gaping grin. Her arms were easy around him, comfortable with his swaying weight, and neither she nor Sarek –recently returned to Earth from his ambassador’s duties on Vulcan- seemed to mind the way that his boys had intruded on their conversation.

“The errors in your judgment never cease to astound me, Sasiss. You possess no cock upon which to provide information, nor a cock head to act as a tip. Furthermore, I doubt Jim has any desire to introduce your claws to his prostate, or his cock.”

Choking on his own breath, horrified as much as he was startled, Jim twisted in his chair once more. The ferocity of his motion nearly tipped him over, would have if Spock hadn’t jammed a foot against the legs of his chair already. There was a faint pull to his brows, an uptick to the corner of his full lips, and if Jim hadn’t known his brother so well, he would have thought him serious. Instead he flushed, and his scandalized squeal was lost under the chortle of laughter that pulled from the Caitian’s chest.

She had decided to crawl forward, intent on the food that Spock seemed so set on keeping just out of reach. Claw-tipped hands splayed on the table, one knee balanced on the edge, and her tail swung in a slow, lazy arch as the young woman found her balance to prowl across the table toward him.

“And you know all about cock, then?”

“Oh my _God_! Sasiss get off the _table_!”

Leaning back in his chair, face caught in his hands, Jim groaned out the words in a pleading hiss. The plea went unanswered though, the two ignoring him as they often did. Instead, she continued forward, a sharp, toothy grin splitting her muzzle, and the faint flash of white that Spock gave was answer enough. He didn’t want to know where this was going, even if the two only teased him as much as they teased one another.

“I know much of my betrothed’s sense of adventure, behind closed doors, if that is what you refer to?”

These were things that Jim didn’t want to know, didn’t need to hear or even think about. He liked Nyota, loved the woman like the sister she had become, just as the same as he loved Spock for the man’s dark eyes and his dry sense of humor, the quiet huff of his laughter.  Just then though, he loved neither of them, wanted nothing to do with the engaged duo just as he wanted nothing to do with Sasiss, with her swaying calico tail and the sharp splay of her exposed teeth.

“Does she have a good cock? Syntho-flesh? Thick?”

Wild eyes jerking between them, she ignored his words completely, seated on the table with her long legs curled beneath her like the housecat she swore she wasn’t. There was something challenging between the two of them, bright in their eyes and sharp in the air, and Jim swore. He swore and swore and swore, turning away from them, scrambling out of his chair. Quiet laughter followed him as he stumbled, fingers finding the grass before he could pull himself upright, but there was no shame in the way he retreated on hurried feet into the house, the kitchen.

“Everything good, Kiddo?”

He tumbled past his Dad and Amanda, on the patio, relaxing next to the grill with a wood and wrought iron bench beneath them. His Dad slouched, comfortable on his day off from Starfleet, with a familiar beer caught between his fingers. Beside him, Amanda looked as relaxed and regal as ever; chocolate hair loose down her back and a soft, off-shoulder sun dress in a delicate emerald pressed against her pale skin. Both turned wide eyes to him as he darted past, but only Amanda’s choked exclamation reached him as the door snapped shut behind him.

“I really, _really_ don’t want to hear about Spock and Ny experimenting with a strap-on, okay?”

The door smacked loudly against its frame but dimly, from outside, he could still hear their voices, their laughter. Horrified as he was, face flushed, Jim shifted from foot to foot before pressing a heated cheek to the cool stretch of the counter. He should have been prepared for the worst, but there was only so much scandal he could take from the two before he became overwhelmed, nearly uncomfortable.  Their comfort with sex, slander - surely that kind of ease would never grace his words? He didn’t completely understand them, couldn’t relate to the easy way that such words dripped from their tongues, no matter how he tried.

Yet.

Yet, Bones had started to spawn those sort of thoughts, hadn’t he? He’d planted that seed, with his sweet words and his thick voice, the soft ink etchings across his skin and the way that he handled Jim’s children. The clinical appreciation that he had of the other man’s aesthetic appeal had become something else, after months of scattered meetings, of lazy laughter and good food. What was he to do, swept up with emotion that he could barely comprehend, with the budding desire to touch and be touched for the first time in his life?

Swearing softly, lips barely moving with the sound, Jim twisted his head until the other cheek could rest on a cool spot now. His body bubbled with emotions that he didn’t know if he wanted, things that he didn’t want to hear, and there was nothing to be done against the downward slide that he hadn’t even seen the start of. That didn’t make it any less overwhelming.

Quietly, the door rattled open, and even with his face turned away he could place his Dad’s stride. The pause between his steps, the militaristic swagger to his walk; Chris had always been powerful, had always been tall and strong for as long as Jim could remember. That stride held determination in it, had thrown the man down the ramp of the _Yorkshire_ to where the sickly, walking corpse of his son had already attacked an officer, blood in his teeth and a fever-haze in his eyes.

Now, Chris pulled another beer from the fridge, snapped off the top of it with a pressured _pop_. Hefting himself up, his Dad sat on the counter next to him, radiating warmth that Jim readily shifted toward. A glance through his lashes showed a concerned, if amused look on the older man’s face, and a tension that he hadn’t known he held slipped from within his bones. Body lax against the counter, the touch of fingers in his hair made him sigh, and his dad took a long, slow drink of his beer.

“You okay, Kiddo?”

Quiet, he shrugged, tongue thick behind his teeth. As if he understood, Chris hummed around a mouthful of beer, nodded slowly. The teenager shifted his weight against the counter until his bare feet found better ground to stand on. When Chris spoke, his words were slow, chosen carefully with the sort of restraint and knowing that only his father had ever seemed to master where he was concerned.

“This about that Doctor? I know that Amanda talked about Spock being more wound up than usual about something, and usually you’re the cause.”

“It-yeah. Yeah, it’s about Bones.”

There must have been something in his voice, because he felt the way that his Dad sighed then, could feel the slight hesitation along his fingertips. There was warmth within his touch though, familiar and kind, and the sound on his lips had been different. Low, nearly mournful in its understanding, and with a quiet sound of his own, Jim tilted until he could see his Dad’s face once more.

A heavy frown creased Chris’ face, pulled at the lines that already cut age into his flesh until he looked older than his forty-one years. There was something bright and wet in his eyes though, reading Jim in ways that he didn’t want to be known.  But Chris had always been good like that, had always known exactly what Jim didn’t want to say, and the man could see it then, for he sighed.  It was a heavy sound that rattled Jim’s own chest second hand, and Jim didn’t know if he wanted to know the reason then or not.

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

-

“Lift.”

“Daddy, I already brushed my teeth.”

One brow lifted, Jim watched where Kevin stood tip toe on his stool. Freckled fingers gripped tight to the edge of the sink, white knuckled and splayed as wide as they could to support himself, and Jim pressed a careful hand to the hot stretch of his youngest child’s back. Another glance, and sure enough, the boys toothbrush still dripped a dirty mixture of left over toothpaste and water, and he sighed quietly.

Running the brush head back under the water until it came away clean, Jim hummed at his son when Kevin leaned back into his chest. Green eyes blinking wide at him, speckled lips were pursed in a quiet, questioning pout, but he waited.  Patience was a lesson that he had learned early on, before even claiming the boys as his own.

Surely, it was something he had learned when he was young and alone, once Sam had disappeared and everything that mattered had died away or worse.  Five years old and, just barely, he could remember the heavy fall of Frank’s body on the stairs, the way that the man’s shout cut short and his liquor slurred words came to a sharp halt. The swift crackling sound that his throat made as it twisted, the way that he lay pliant and dull at the base of the old stairs.  Frank, the only real friend that Jim had known, easy to grin and easy to laugh; uncaring that Jim wasn’t _his_ so long as he could be there for him in some shape or form.

He had sat there for hours, pressed close to Frank’s body, trying to wake the man who stared at him with glazed eyes, before pulling himself to the phone, pleading with the operator to make him wake up, make him blink.

Patience came as a harsh lesson, small as he had been, waiting for someone to come from San Francisco to get him with Winona crawling her way through the black. Words like _waived rights_ and _no legal guardian_ had all gone over his head at the time, things that he hadn’t understood.  He hadn’t known what to make of the officers or the doctors, the people in uniform who told him to _stay in his seat, someone would get him in a little_. He had only known silence and then Chris, with his dark blue eyes and the dark brown of his hair, the way that he’d taken to his knees to talk to Jim, like he mattered.

He _had_ mattered, just the same as his children mattered now, and his patience had been earned then when he had been no older than Thomas.

“Hey Daddy?”

“Whacha got, Bug?”

Kevin’s breath left him on an exaggerated puff, lips pursing wide and wet before the little boy grunted. Shifting his arms when Kevin fell into him completely, he tucked the boy’s weight up against his own, holding him close as Kevin snaked his arms around Jim’s shoulders, his throat. Habitual movements, and he knew just how to twist the tap off one handed, how to backpedal the both of them out of the bathroom into the illuminated hall.

Down the way, something crashed in one of the rooms, and he could barely turn toward the sound before his oldest began to squeal.

“It’s fine Daddy!”

“Thomas, be _careful_.”

Insistent fingers played with the loose ends of Jim’s hair, little nails scratching at his skull, and when he looked back Kevin seemed affronted, insulted to have lost his Dad’s attention even for a moment.

“ _Daddy_.”

“Hey, hey, I’m listening.” Jostling the boy a bit, pulling Kevin back up into his arms until the boy was balanced on his hip rather than scrambling at the joint of his knee and choking him with his own shirt. He reeled, little arms wobbling for a moment before he righted himself, adjusted until he could cling where he wanted to. “Totally listening, because you brushed your teeth, and then you started whining-“

“’m not whinin’!”

Tilting his head away when Kevin swanned forward, Jim laughed from somewhere deep in his belly. The grin he gave his son was both affection and teeth, delighted by the exasperation in that little voice and the way that Kevin’s little fists thumped quietly against his chest for a moment. Voice rattled by the pressure, he smacked a kiss to the bath-damp auburn curls that lay across the three-year-old’s forehead before sweeping them back with his free hand.

“Uh huh, anyway,” voice pitching to match his son’s voice, Jim’s throat ached from the high tone he used to repeat the words, “‘ _Daddy_ _what?’_ ”

Clearing his throat, like his words were all important and impressive, green eyes narrowed on him accusingly, as though he thought Jim wouldn’t listen, or that he would laugh, and he sighed. Grin dying down to something more manageable, he listened with one ear as Tommy continued to bang around in his room. Looking for something, hopefully, he couldn’t deal with anything broken this late at night, not when he still had homework to do, lecture notes to sift through.

“You should really call Doctor Bones.”

“Do you feel okay? You’re not short of breath, right?  No spots or anything? How many fingers do I have?”

Little eyes rolled at him, and Kevin seemed more exasperated than before, defeated even, like he didn’t know what he’d done to deserve such a father.  Any other time, and he would have been a little entertained by that, if a little insulted, but as it was Jim was too busy getting his son to look at him.

“T’ree.”

“Mhm,” Fingers plying at Kevin’s jaw until the boy turned his head, he released his hold to watch how the boy swayed, but there was no more of a waver than usual. Still, he frowned, stomach already starting to twist in on itself, because something was wrong with his baby, had to be. Kevin hated Doctors, even Mark hadn’t been free of that distrust, no matter that the man had always been known to them. “Why do I need to call Doctor Bones?”

 _Fuck_ , even his children called him Bones, the poor man.

“Be _cause_ ,” As if it were obvious, and he caught Kevin when the boy started to slip, hands thrown into the air before his little palms pressed to the side of his head. Vaguely, he recalled seeing the same sort of frustrated posture from his Dad, and Jim bit back a sharp sigh of his own. “ _Ko-mekh-il_ said that you look sad! But-but Doctor Bones made you smile, so you need to call him!”

Just like that, his irritation puffed out of him, and Jim stared at his wriggling child with a furrowed brow and a frown. Kevin took advantage of the way that his grip had loosened to slip down to the floor, arms thrown out and his hands splayed wide in the air until he could balance himself properly. The little boy nodded then, content as he could be, and gave Jim a grave look before he started to wobble away.

“Call ‘im, Daddy.”

“Uh-huh.”

Words didn’t seem to know how to form, not the ones he wanted anyway, and instead Jim watched his son with wide eyes.  Tommy peeked his head out of his door, hair a tussled mess and a flush on his full cheeks. The six year old seemed proud, though it was impossible to tell if it was of himself or his brother.

“Kevy, c’mon.”

Grabby hands, and the boys caught each other, small figures bleeding out into the hall before Tommy supported his brother. Thin arms wound around his waist, pulling the smaller boy against him to hold him when he started to fall, and they worked in tandem. The kind of shadow-dance that Jim could remember from his own childhood, and suddenly he felt older than his years, how many times had his own Dad seen this sort of display with him and Spock, felt this gutted and confused by a child?

“I’mma sleep with Tommy tonight, mkay?”

“Uh-huh.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've got no words, just enjoy~

_Call him, Daddy_.

Words that were easier said than done; spoken in the simple, soft tones of an inquisitive child.  No shadow of worry, darkness or of exhausted understanding but, instead, the sort of lenient, chattered teeth sounds that could only come from someone who knew no better. And he had ached with it, stood in the empty, illuminated hall for a long few minutes, caught by the simplicity of his son’s request with a billow of something in his chest and an emptiness between his fingers.

That call wasn’t made for days though, longer than he would care to admit, with finals filling his hours with an academia that he couldn’t just ignore even if he had wanted to. Doctorates waited for nobody, not when he had a dissertation to scratch out, not where there were classes that he still needed to take, principles and theories that he still needed to learn. Work came next then, heavy loaded and full of spilled coffee and disgruntled customers as the winter months set in and the blessed Indian summer that they had languished in disappeared beneath a steady influx of thick fog and rain that quickly turned to slush and ice.

The two weeks that passed felt like they dragged, pulled from him with a sort of bone-rattling ferocity to such a degree that Jim questioned himself, second guessed his own intellect as he always did. Ancient xeno-philosophy clung heavy to his tongue, colored the words that he spoke with inquisitions that he wasn’t sure he wanted the answers to; muddled him with concepts and thoughts that felt too large for his own head. Yet he thrived with the same sort of feral demand that he always had when pushed, sleep-deprived and just a little hungry from forgotten mid-day meals. And then just like that, finals were come and gone within what felt like years and hours all at once, and he was left with winter break, and nothing to do with himself but a shift here or there.

 _Call him, Daddy_.

The boys were off at day-care, scuttled away to the ‘fleet operated construct by Sasiss, the Caitian more than delighted to be able to take the children to work with her as she often did. In the wake of their absence, the apartment was empty, quiet in a way that felt even colder than the sort of silence that settled at night. He was truly alone in the place, without even the muffled sound of children’s voices to keep him company through the walls, as he went about his day.

Without the demanded buff of philosophy, the heavy load of understanding a long dead, alien culture that couldn’t answer the questions that he had, everything felt just a little bit numb, dulled around the edges.

Slouched against the back of the couch, legs stretched out before him on the floor, Jim cradled his personal communicator with one hand, while the nails of his other picked at the soft, faded denim at his thigh. He hesitated then, comfortable as he was, and contemplated kicking his boots off only to scowl down at them instead, for the cuffs of his jeans were already tucked down into the mouths of them, and it would be nothing but a fight to get them back in again. Instead he sighed, stress bitten lips caught between the sharp of his teeth once more and held in frustration, consideration.

The dial tone was loud in the empty space of his living room, nearly shrill, and he winced at the sudden chirp, then the next and the next.

His breath caught in his chest and despite himself he scowled, a wounded sort of frown as the communicator continued to chirp, as the call continued to go unanswered. Should have known better, a spiteful part of him supplied, he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up. He wasn’t beautiful, he wasn’t special, not with his demons and his scars, the screams that rattled in his ears or the feral hunger that gnawed at his ribs; what sort of man would want him, when Bones was larger than life an-

_“’lo?”_

The voice that answered _wasn’t_ Bones.

Soft and sweet in the way that only a child’s could be, that was a little girl, older than his boys but younger than himself, with something breathless like laughter on her tongue. Her voice was almost the same drawling tone as Bones’ though, honey slow and smooth, but the quality of it was different, sugar-saccharine instead of molasses thick, something bright and crisp.

Frowning down at the Comm, Jim floundered, a humming sound of contemplation filling the air instead.

“Is Bo-uh…is Leonard there?”

“ _Mhm, Daddy! There’s a mista on the line for you!”_

Distantly, he could hear the muffled sound of Bones correcting the little girl on a word, but it was lost behind the calm kind of quiet that settled between his ears and the soft smile on his lips. Joanna, the only person that would ever call Bones _Daddy_ , and her voice was cherub-bright and young, small like he hadn’t imagined it would be. He had pictured her older, from the scattering of stories that Bones had told him, from the pictures that he’d seen.

She was only five, and distantly he knew that, but he also remembered Bones saying she was tall for her age.

Children, he was comparing the voices and height of children, because he had those- two of them, two little boys who were quickly becoming not so little anymore, and suddenly Jim felt old. Older than his almost twenty, older than he should have been by far; was this what his father felt in the middle of the night, when Jim was small and big headed, toddling along after Spock as the two of them found trouble after trouble?

Dragging a hand across his face, slouching further still into his stretch, Jim fell until the bottom sharp edges of his shoulder blades pressed along the floor. Head held up by the couch, his neck was craned at an almost uncomfortable angle, but the sound of Bones’ voice was worth it. The bloom in his belly, sticky-sleek and warm, was both different and welcomed and new, and more than worth any aches in his throat.

“ _Hello? Who am I talki-Jo, baby, no, that don’t go there, Christ almighty child.”_

Grinning, thumb caught against his teeth, Jim’s eyes shut against the sudden swell of something happy and whole within him.

“Thought you were Baptist, isn’t it a sin to take the Lord’s name in vain?”

“ _Jim!_ ”

A near bellow of excitement, Bones’ voice carried across the comm link with a swift kind of delight, crackling around the edges from both static and from force. As if he hadn’t been grinning before, Jim’s face started to burn from the pressure of the pull, and he pressed his fingers harder against his lips, tried to smooth the grin out as best he could. There was a loud rattle of something from the other side, a crash of some sorts, and Bones voice dropped into something dark and flustered all at once.

“ _Fuck, wait no, Jo-Jo don’t you da­-”_

 _“Daddy said a bad word! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!_ ”

The little girl’s words carried in a singing tone even as he heard the other man let out a long, low groan, and Jim couldn’t help himself then. Laughter hiccupped out from between his teeth, pulled from his lips and lungs by the high tones of her voice and the sounds of defeated breathing all at once. Alarming or refreshing, he wasn’t sure which, but there was a sort of startled kinship then in knowing that he wasn’t the only one to accidently teach his children such things.

“ _Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Jimmy-boy._ ”

He was laid out on the floor then, sprawled in the walkway behind his couch, and even as he struggled to breath, Jim cast a bewildered glance around himself. The apartment was empty, and there was no shame in the way he now sat, but confusion was a funny thing when he didn’t realize he had fallen the rest of the way. Pushing himself up with his elbows, the motion was aborted, and instead, he flopped back to the floor with a loud huff, ribs rattling in his chest.

“Hi.”

“ _Hi._ ”

His smile hurt, but there was no pulling it in, no stopping himself, not when he could barely make out the delighted murmurings of Joanna in the background of the call, the scramble of what sounded like kitchen utensils being scattered about.

“This a bad time?”

 _“Ain’t never a bad time when you call, Jimmy, just need to know whatcha want_?”

Squinting up at his ceiling, tracing the crack that stretched from the door frame into the living room, Jim bit at his tongue for a moment to control himself, surely, so he didn’t do anything stupid, didn’t say anything rash.  Bones was an adult, with a job and a daughter, and Jim-Jim needed to be an adult, Jim could be an adult. He had kids of his own; he was putting himself through school, which constituted enough to at least land on the scale of adulthood.

“I want to see you.”

Or, he could embarrass himself.

Eyes shutting tight once more, lips pressed together, his heart was a frightful thing within his chest then, pounding against its cage within his ribs as if it wanted to burst. He didn’t blame it, nearly envied it, as mortification heated his flesh and painted a delicate rouge across the crest of his cheeks, his throat. He wasn’t an adult then, scratch that, he was a child, fretful and frightened, who said the wrong things and put himself places he didn’t want to be, but it was too late for that sort of realization now, wasn’t it?

Across the line, Bones breath was a soft chuckle, rasping and slow.

“ _I’ve got Jo-Jo for a few more hours, so how about you meet us at the usual for elevenses?”_

-

He’d spent nearly half an hour muttering to himself, between pulling on his dark khaki sweater and locking his apartment door behind him, only to take the stairs three at a time onto the main street. Stiff fingers had stuffed his faded violet beanie down on his hair, and Jim had woven his way through the growing throng of pedestrians and holiday shoppers. Laughing voices and an assortment of winter wear and, for once, his skin hadn’t started to crawl at the insistent, pressing crowd.

Nearly tripping into the now very familiar diner, Jim gusted his breath against his fingers, and he pressed them together with a furious, chuffing motion as he straightened. _Shelly’s_ was fairly full, with the mid-day rush having already found their way inside, taking much of the available seating. Voices having risen to one single, fluctuating near-roar, it was packed and pleasant, warm in comparison to the chill of the outside air.

“Far corner, Kirk, next to where the jukebox used to be.”

Tones thick from years of nicotine, the namesake’s daughter gave him a grin from the checkout counter, heavy bosom leaned against the orange and white surface. Her lipstick was the same vibrant burgundy as always, black eyes glittering, softly curling salt and pepper shag of hair loose around her neck and chin, and Olive gave him a smile that was all teeth, black-tipped nails motioning toward the mentioned seat. There was a little snowflake on her nametag today, haphazardly cut out and no doubt a gift from a grandchild.

“Why would I ever want to leave you though, when you look this beautiful?”

“You are far too gay for me, _La_.”

Waggling a finger at him, the aged Betazoid woman was dismissive even as she smiled, and Jim ducked his head before scurrying away. Her laughter followed after him, crinkling and bright over the din that filled the rest of the diner, and it seemed to propel him to the far corner that she had indicated. He slipped easily between the tables, arms neatly held above his head, and a familiar, elderly Edosian gave him a wave as he passed.

Absentmindedly finding the back of Bones’ head with one hand, Jim gave Arex a wave of his own before dropping into the empty side of the booth.

Bones’ hair lay in ruins now, dark brown strands in disarray from where Jim’s fingers had carded through them. There was coffee on his breath that Jim could smell even from through the distance between them, and honey in his beard, bristling the strands until they gleamed sticky in the overhead lighting.  A thick knit midnight blue and soft white argyle cardigan hung on his wide shoulders, sleeves rolled to his elbows, and there was a scarf pooled loose behind him, nearly dripping from the booth. The domestic look suited him, Jim decided after a long glance.

The southern man’s mouth was far too full for conversation and, instead, Jim turned his attention to the cherub that sat with a little white fedora on her head.  Her hair was a tumble of dark copper curls, ringlets that created a halo for her hat to settle in, and her dress was mint in the bodice from what he could see, quilted for warmth, with long white sleeves and a peter pan neckline with what looked like chocolate milk on it.

She blinked at him with wide eyes before seeming to recognize him, or at least deem him worthy, and one dainty little hand reached across the table for his own.

“Welcome to elevenses, mista Kirk.”

Taking her offered hand in his own, affection was a warm bubble within his chest, bright and soft with how he settled into an easy mood, and Jim leaned over the table to press a kiss to her small fingers. She nodded at him like he’d done something right, taken the right seat or worn the correct sweater, and that seemed to be the best thing he could ask for in that moment. Her nails were painted black, miniature ovals that looked manicured, with a gleam he could recognize from Nyota’s own hands, and he filed that knowledge away with a faint hum.

“Thank you for having me, Miss Joanna.”

Her upturned nose curled higher, displeasure pulling across her thin brows and her full cheeks, and the young girl frowned at him with all the harsh disdain that a child could muster. Beside her, Bones seemed overwhelmed, wide eyed at the sight of his daughter and Jim conversing like adults and, slowly, the man took another bite of a honey-soaked biscuit.

“ _La Donna_ Joanna, thank you, mista Kirk.”

Amusement curled in his belly, and Jim leaned back, comfortable in his booth seat. Across from him, Joanna had crossed her legs, and had taken the napkin from her lap to pat at her fingertips, cleaning away the sausage grease and biscuit honey. She looked like a picture, almost, the image only brought into the stark reality that she was a _child_ by the way she frowned at the napkin fluff that stuck to her sugar-sticky skin, the discoloration that was more and more obviously chocolate milk on her collar.

“ _La Donna_ Joanna, I had no idea! I hope you can forgive me, the good Doctor didn’t tell me I’d be dining with a _mafiosa_!”

One hand pressed to his chest, wide eyed, Jim blinked at the young girl with all the sincerity he could muster. She seemed delighted with his effort though, giving him a nod before taking a look at the empty table before him with another frown. The tone of it was different this time, less pointedly displeased, and the young girl pulled herself up to sit a little straighter when a waitress started to sway past.

“Ma’am, may we have a cup of coffee for mista Kirk?”

“Course you may, sweetheart.”

“Water, please!” He corrected, leaning to the side in the booth to watch as she went. He recognized the curl of her hair and the shoes that she wore, and supplemented her name when he found it. “Thank you, Marnie!”

The woman never broke her stride, not even with the request thrown at her, and Bones let out a groan even as his daughter looked pleased with herself beside him. Unable to help himself, Jim grinned, pressing a hand to his mouth to stifle his own bubbling laughter as he settled back into the booth once more. Joanna didn’t seem to mind though, not with how he laughed nor how he slumped, and instead, the young girl grinned at him in return, picking up her ceramic mug of chocolate milk with both hands.

“Alright, Corleone,” Bones groused, shaking himself out of his embarrassed stupor to press the fedora back onto her curls where it had started to slip. She wriggled under her father’s grasp, grinning up at him from under her lashes and her bangs, and Jim could hear the excited _clunk clunk clunk_ of her feet thumping against the bottom of the booth. “Eat your elevenses so Daddy can talk to Jim.”

Hands still holding her mug, Joanna stared at him for a moment, and then Jim watched as the little girl gave him her full attention once more. Leaning forward from her place in the booth, lips pursed, her voice was a stage-whisper that she no doubt thought was inconspicuous, and he barely suppressed his laughter once more as he leaned forward.

“Daddy wants you t’himself. Is that okay?”

“I wouldn’t mind being shared,” he whispered back, voice loud enough to be heard over the din of the diner, and he caught the way Bones rolled his eyes in exasperation.  Joanna though, she nodded, seemed content with that response, for she leaned back once more and patted her father on one scruffy cheek. Another smear of honey got left in her wake- there were going to be indentations on his mouth if he kept biting down on his lips like this.

“I’ll share mista Jimmy with you, okay Daddy?”

“ _Thank you_.” Bones’ voice was a long, low drawl, filled with notes of exasperation and other soft things that Jim recognized from how he spoke to his own children. Those bright hazel eyes were on him then, and with Joanna thoroughly distracted by her honeyed biscuits and sausage links, ~~and~~ Jim had nothing to hide himself behind. So he sat a little straighter, stared at Bones with wide eyes and a growing flush upon his flesh, and knew the instant that the older man noticed, by the raising of his brows and the twitch of his lips. “Now, whatcha want Jimmy?”

Licking his lips, eyes flickering to Joanna first, where the little girl sat, then to Bones, Jim curled his fingers on the edge of the table.

The words were hot on his tongue, cloying in the back of his throat where they sat thick and heavy, and he could feel them move there with his breathing. Anxiety was familiar by this point and, just barely, he could see the shaded curl of pale, inked bone on the skin of Leonard’s wrists. The familiarity was sweet, soft and wonderful to the soul, and Jim watched that shifting skin for a moment before taking another deep breath.

“You, if that’s still on the table.”

The fire behind Bones’ eyes darkened, turned to something hungry and hot, and Jim felt the weight of it like a heavy, welcomed pet. The flush along his face grew more intense, and Jim didn’t know whether to preen or hide from such a feeling. He wasn’t used to the attention, not like this, not willingly, but there was a thrill to it all the same that he found he couldn’t deny.

“Joce gets Jo-jo in an hour.”

-

An hour was a long time to wait.

An hour was a long time when he could count the minutes, seconds, knew the mathematical makeup of time down to the nanosecond. He knew how much philosophy he could read in an hour, and he knew how many bedtime stories he could give the boys in an hour. He knew the number of beers that his Dad could drink, and Jim knew how many times in an hour Spock would tell him to _cease fidgeting, Jim, meditation is meant to be relaxing_.

To sit across from Bones and Joanna though, with a plate of hash browns and over easy eggs slowly filling his belly, an hour went quickly. An hour was lost in the sounds of Bones’ laughter and Joanna’s cherub voice, telling stories in her sub-par Italian accent while her father kept her curls away from her food. The hour went by fast, and Jim found himself distracted by the sunlight in Bones’ hair and the way that Joanna swayed where she sat, and he was distracted up until a tall, buxom woman wandered to their table.

She was no doubt taller than he, with sunset firelight for hair and eyes like pale liquid gold, and the smile that stretched her soft pink lips was genuine and warm. Hands on her hips, long white jeans that hugged her legs and flowing layers of earthen toned sweaters and scarves, she was like a bonfire of light and life, heartfelt and welcoming, and there was Joanna in the upturn of her nose and the dimples in her cheeks.

“Hey Len, hi baby girl! Who’s your friend here?”

Joanna erupted into motion while Jocelyn leaned on the side of Jim’s booth, hazel eyes wide and her hands slamming down on the table. If Bones hadn’t been so quick, her third mug of chocolate milk would have gone all over the table, and as it was, Jim pressed back a little further into his booth seat just to be safe.

“Mama!”

The little white fedora fell from her curls, and only Bones quick movement caught it before it could tumble completely down. The man held it to his chest then, rolling his eyes at his daughter’s excitement, but the exasperation fought with the gentle smile that pulled at his lips.

“Mama, this is Jimmy Kirk! He’s real nice, and he’s got two boys my age! Kevy and Tommy!”

“Kevin and Thomas,” Jim corrected quietly, watching Jocelyn with wide eyes. There was something soft and knowing in her gaze, shrewd in those copper-coin eyes. Intelligence and something quiet, steadfast in a way that he recognized from Thelin and, despite himself, Jim felt the tension pull from his shoulders.

“Jimmy? Wouldn’t happen to be Jim Kirk, would you?”

Flushing, slowly, he nodded, watchful still even with the tension gone. There were only certain people who knew his name with those sort of eyes, that sort of reproachful tone, and he could only prepare himself so much every time. It was always the same though, that face and that voice, and he sighed quietly.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Jocelyn Treadway.  My husband read your theory on the intra-galactic warp transition and string theorem correlation …thing. I didn’t understand a word of it, and I’m not even sure it’s called that, but Clay’s a warp core engineer, and he thinks you’re a genius.”

 _Oh_.

Flushing further, Jim found himself grinning. Pride was delightful, every single time, and he gave the tall, vibrant haired woman that grin freely. She returned it in kind, readily, and there was an impressed light to her sunshine eyes.

“Thank you. I would love to discuss it with him sometime?”

She swung her tote around, watermelon pink and soft syntho-leather, and pulled out a slim little card from one of the many compartments. _Clayton Treadway_ scrawled across it with a Comm number and office hours, and Jim pocketed it with little fanfare.

“He’s working on the _Enterprise_ right now, new flagship that the fleet’s making? But I know he’d love to be able to talk to you some time. Baby girl, c’mon, let’s leave Daddy and his friend so we can get back to Jerky, yeah?”

Joanna disappeared from beside Bones when she wriggled under the table, and Jim felt a little hand brace against the top of his boot before she reappeared beside her mother. As if used to this behavior, Bones handed over her hat while Jocelyn smoothed her bouncing curls down into something more manageable before slipping the hat back on. The young girl bounced in place, delighted with the attention before she started to squirm, pulling on her mother’s tote, only for an instant, and then she ducked in, pressing a smacking kiss to Bones’ cheek and receiving one in response.

Jim kept quiet as the duo said their goodbyes and wandered away, and only then did he give a questioning hum.

_“Jerky?”_

“Brindle bull terrier.”  Nodding, taking a slow drink of his sixth cup of coffee, Bones relaxed back into the booth. He seemed tired suddenly, like a few of his strings had been cut, and Jim found that he understood that feeling. There was a softness to his tone though, something content, and Jim felt himself smiling softly.  “Clay’s good for them. Sit tight, I’m ganna go up and settle the check.”

“Bones!”

Mouth twisting in a frown, Bones shook his head at him, and pointed down at the booth when Jim tried to stand.

“Sit, Kirk, I got it.”

Silence carried, comfortable as Bones stretched, pulling himself to the counter to pay, and Jim dragged his Comm out of his bag to check for any new messages. Nothing out of the ordinary; a few student emails and an update from Sasiss on how the boys were doing; a whining notice from Nyota complaining about Vulcan in-laws. He tapped out a short response to the latter, keeping the middle notice for later reference, and filtered through his student emails to see if they were anything important.

“Hey, c’mon.”

Looking at the hand held out to him, Jim gathered his bag and put his fingers in Bones’, letting the man pull him from the booth. His grip was careful, and he threaded their knuckles together in a gentle tangle. Weaving their way swiftly out of the diner, the air outside was crisp and cool, and Jim pressed closer to the older man’s side in a silent search for extra warmth. He tugged Bones in the direction of his apartment, and the short walk was come and gone in that same soft silence from those last moments in the diner.

He swung their clasped hands faintly as they walked, pressed in close, and grinned when Bones only sighed, joining him in the swaying motion that had settled between them. It lasted up the first flight of stairs, and then disappeared with a harsh grumble and a pull from Bones as he sagged against the railing.

“Kinda fresh hell is this? _Stairs_?”

Laughing, bright and loud, Jim shimmied away from the other man, and took the stairs two at a time to the next landing. Hands on his hips, he swayed from side to side then, taunting where he stared down at the other, and with a toss of his head, Jim shrugged.

“Well, you don’t think you can handle them, old man, I can just walk myself home.”

“ _Old man_? Fuck you, callin’ me old ma - get back here you little shit!”

Screeching, Jim twisted around, another loud peal of laughter escaping him as he darted up the next flight of stairs. He could hear Bones thundering behind him, knew the things that the neighbors would say, and yet- yet, he found himself laughing, delighted by the turn of events and the light feeling in his chest. It lasted until he sagged against his front door, panting, and Jim sucked in rapid deep breaths.

Bones caught him by the shoulder, twirling him around until his back pressed to the door.  Breath catching, Jim stared up at the man with a slack mouth and a heaving chest. His eyes were burning bright, hazel and golden, and when gentle knuckles dusted across his cheek, Jim leaned into the touch. A thumb swept along his bottom lip, slow and sweeping, and wide eyed, Jim watched as Bones stared down at him.

“I’m going to kiss you, okay?”

“Uh huh.”

A chuckle against his mouth, and then Bones was upon him in a hot press of lips and a wet slide of tongue. Heavy, consuming, he pressed into the contact of it, the fingers cradling his jaw and those that held his hip, and his own hands lifted to tangle in the dark strands of the taller man’s hair. The scraping motion of his nails drew forth a groan from the man’s chest, and a moan from his own as a thigh slotted itself between his own.

Startled, panting, Jim wrenched his mouth away with a wet sound, and listened to the quiet curse that Bones gave against his throat.

“ _Fuck_ , darlin’. We need to…to, uh, stop and get somethin’ to drink, okay?”

“ _Uh huh_.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lets see how many spelling errors ao3 adds for me! Here you go lovelies, enjoy and tell me what you think! My Beta wonder and I worked extra hard on this for you loves~

_“Fuck, darlin’. We need to…to, uh, stop and get somethin’ to drink, okay?”_

_“Uh huh.”_

But he didn’t want to stop. He didn’t want to cease the movement of his hands or the hiccupping, stuttering push of his hips. He had begun to burn, with a bubbling pit of _want_ finding home within his belly and a hard thigh finding shelter between the cradle of his own, and _God_.

Bones spoke of stopping, but for every stuttering roll of Jim’s pelvis, the older man’s bulging, growing erection ground back in response, as if he couldn’t quite control his own hips’ aborted movements. His breath was a series of hot, humid puffs and, with his skin burning, Jim pressed his mouth to Bones’ once more in as chaste a kiss as he could manage.

“Fuck, okay, okay then we need t’get inside Jimmy, c’mon.”

Nodding readily, reaching behind himself, Jim slapped a hand against the display panel until it dinged to life. Another smack before it recognized his identification, and the door unlocked behind them. It was broad daylight out, and the only thing that kept him from tumbling into his own living room was Bones’ hands gripping tight at his hips, holding him steady. Lips curling, eyes bright, the older man gave a quiet chuckle, pressed another soft kiss to Jim’s panting mouth. The laughter reverberated through the both of them and, carefully, the older man walked the both of them back into the apartment; the door clattered against its frame when Bones kicked it shut, and grinned at Jim.

Those fingers were on his hips once more, and Bones’ chest swelled for a moment before Jim found himself in the air. Gasping, startled, his thighs wrapped snug around Bones’ hips while his fingertips dug into the meat of the man’s shoulders, and Jim felt small then, slighter than he knew himself to be. Yet, there was laughter on his breath as his head tipped back, and those were lips along his throat, his collarbones, trailing suckling kisses across his burning flesh.

He’d never thought there’d be laughter with intimacy.

“Which room?”

Words muffled against his skin, and Jim’s fingers found Bones’ hair once more just for something to hold.  Soft to the touch, it combated the burn of beard that had begun to leave fire along his skin, and he took it readily. This was intimacy then, this was desire and want, that burning that he’d never experienced before, it had a name now, had a person and a place.

“Last do-door.”

He held tight as they swayed down the hall, Bones long legs making long strides across the wood and carpet flooring. He didn’t even have the heart to tell the man to take his shoes off, too wrapped up as he was in feeling the others skin on his own, because such would make him stop or falter and _no_. Smooth and hot, bitter burning to the touch, there were only so many places he could put his hands at once. And then, then he was on his back, with his bedroom door kicked open and his body dropped onto the familiar soft embrace of his mattress.

His breathing became gasps then, loud in the silence of the room, and Jim stared up with wild electric blue eyes, drinking in the sight of the man who stood at the end of the bed. Bones’ cardigan, pretty as it had been, looked better on the floor, and the man made quick work of pulling his cream colored turtleneck off as well until it joined the sweater. It tried to, at least, getting stuck around the ears for a moment and, as Bones struggled, Jim found himself laughing once more. This was delightful, this feeling, this wanting, bubbling up in his lungs and burning in his belly; was this really what people experienced all the time? He would burn up and surely, he would die if he felt anything like this all day long.

The ink that the man had on his arms was only the beginning it seemed, for the lines of thin black stretched, shaded and curved with soft off-white and gray into the bones of his clavicle, his ribcage. The artwork danced across his actual bones, pulled taunt skin rippling with every motion and swaying with the monochrome colors that disappeared beneath the line of Bones’ jeans. The crests of hipbones were there, free of ink but sharp all the same, and he found that he wanted to lick them.

So he did, when Bones leaned close enough, sitting up and twisting just enough to be able to reach, and heard the startled hiss that was an inhale.

“ _Fuck_.”

He had done that, had caused that just as much as he had caused the thick bulge that filled the zipper of Bones’ jeans, stretched the denim tight, and his mouth was cotton-dry. Gaze darting back up, Jim watched with wide eyes and bated breath as the other man slowly crawled over him, one knee at a time up the bed before slipping from his sprawl to crouch over Jim’s body. There was little space between them, and when they kissed once more, he could taste the salt of his own mouth on the other man’s lips.

He groaned and arched, pressed into the contact and felt the electric pull of it deep within his bones, setting a steady slide to his hips even as his legs fell open wide to accommodate the weight of the other. The heaviness was welcomed, as were the lips on his skin, wanted, desired and yet-

Yet.

Those were hands on him now, skimming under his shirt and feeling his scars. Those were fingers, finding the cave of his abdomen and the sharp bite of his hips. Those were nails on his skin, feeling his imperfections, grasping at him, pulling him. Holding him tight and taking claim of something that he didn’t know, found that he maybe couldn’t give.

His chest began to burn then, with a different, acidic sort of fire that filled his lungs with its smoke; it pulled and plucked until his body wound too tight in the wrong direction, and no.  No, this wasn’t right, no this _wasn’t_ good, he didn’t want to be used again, didn’t want to be another number, not again, not like this, not when he-

“ _Stop_!”

In an instant, the hands were off of him, and the weight was gone. In a heartbeat, there was nothing pressing him into the – _his_ _bed_.  Because he was safe, in his _bed_ , because he was home.  It wasn’t grass or dirt or anything of the sort. There were no hands on his skin and no palms fitted over his mouth to make him stop his screaming; nothing pressed between his teeth while he was told to _be good_ and to _not bite_.

Instead, when his eyes focused once more, Bones had moved himself completely off of Jim and to the side, as close as he dared to be without really touching. There was something startled in his golden-fox eyes, something frightened nearly, but there was also something knowing. Something aware and alive, alight in the depths of color, and he knew.

Bones knew.

 _Leonard knew_.

Unable to stop himself, Jim began to sob. A wet, bubbling sound, and he smacked his own hands over his mouth then, fitted his own palms against his teeth and bit, held. As if to stifle the sounds, as if to hold himself together so he didn’t chatter apart completely, but the shaking had set in.

“Hey, hey no, no, Jimmy, you’re alright.”

Careful, gentle fingers gathered him close despite the way that he flinched, and Jim felt his body deflate, felt the shakes and quakes set in harder, heavier. The fingers that held him were linked to tender hands though, and with great care did Bones roll the two of them together in a safe, soft hold. Still, there was something fierce in the line of his arms, and the stretch of his shoulders, something hard and whole and safe.

A mouth pressed to his sweat curled hair, deposited sweeping kisses both quick and slow. Jim turned to the touch, shuddering as he was, trembling as he did, and he held tight with fingertips and teeth-jagged nails to the skin supplied to him. It had been years since he’d had someone larger to hold onto, someone to make him feel small and cared for like he had the boys, and maybe- maybe that was alright. He deserved to feel safe too, didn’t he?

“You want a story?”

Slowly, shuddering still, he nodded, felt the way that Bones exhaled long and leisurely against his hair. Jim clung still, arms tight against the other man, and those were fingertips, sweeping carefully between his shoulder blades. Soothing, languid, there was nothing harsh to the touch, and instead, the feather light caress was barely there at all.

“I took a job, not long after my divorce, that had my internship going out in space. I hate space, Jimmy, more than I hate anything in the world. Most terrifyin’ thing there could ever be, space. Got a great granddaddy who was one of the first men in the black on an exploratory, and I’m still scared o’ the black.  Anyway, first time up was a medical mission, because I’m a blue shirt.”

His voice was a low rumble, steady and soft, and Jim sighed, slowly pulling his nails from the other man’s skin.

“I was miserable, hated every second of it up until we reached our destination even though I’d volunteered for it; but there was this boy, and he was brilliant. He was near feral by the time we got there, every one of them children was, but he was fierce; bit at a woman when she tried to touch ‘im, and stood there with those hauntin’ eyes…”

Jim turned slowly, twisting his face up until he could look at the other man. There was something misty in the older man’s eyes, something somber and quiet in that golden-hazel gaze.  Jim didn’t know what to do with that, or with the words that he was hearing, the things he was being told. Bones _knew_ about Tarsus, had _seen_ Tarsus, but he still seemed to want this, wanted to be here, wanted to hold Jim, and sweep the tears from his cheeks and sooth his fingers down the line of his back to calm him.

“…and he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.  Scared the living daylights out of me. Still does, some days.”

“Leonard?”

Those lips were on his forehead, then his eyelids, careful kisses meant to calm the frightful songbird of his soul. Slowly, Bones pulled the two of them together into a curving cuddle in the softness of the bed, and Jim sank into it with a deep, weary sigh.

“Go to sleep, darlin’.”

-

_Atimeh-Yna heard it first, the only one truly awake during watch._

_They were so hungry that the burn had stopped feeling quite so fierce and Jim watched the world through slitted eyes, blistering blue gaze catching every movement before them. The guards had stopped coming days ago, and the smoke stacks had begun to burn white and clean, with a frothy sort of smoke that smelled of wood and leaves. With that, their group had taken shelter in the shade of the forest near the meadow, with the flowers all dried and dead and the earth quiet._

_He saw her look up, bobble headed and sluggish, with her wheezing brother draped in her lap. Al-Halelmas didn’t even stir, worrisome knowledge, and he could be dead by the end of the day with the way that his chest rattled. She perked up though and, an instant later, Jim heard the sounds of transporter beams._

_Transporter beams.  On Tarsus._

_The El-Aurian female moved her brother with gentle care, and Jim eased out from under the weight of Thomas and Kevin to slip to his knees. The things he saw through the foliage were familiar in color though, even if it felt like it had been years since he had seen such things. Breath rattling in his chest, Jim lurched up to his feet, pressing through the undergrowth until he could struggle to stand._

_“-care about your damn protocol, Nogura, I’m going to find my fucking son.”_

_“Everything is dead, Christopher, and if the boy’s lucky, he probably is too.”_

_“Don’t you fucking da-“_

_Wheezing, bursting through the branches that fought him and the leaves that slapped against his skin, Jim began to scream. A high, reed like sound bore from somewhere low in his throat, and Kevin came awake with an equally shrill cry from behind him. Didn’t matter though, he didn’t care, didn’t care because he knew that voice like he knew that tone, and he was safe now, safe, safe, safe._

_“Daddy!”_

_With a child-like wail, Jim fell to his knees in the mud and muck, felt the jarring in his bones as ash coated his dirty hands once more. Sobbing, breath rattling sharply in his chest, he heard screaming all around then, all his children coming awake behind him, and the boy could only cry and cry. Those were familiar hands on his shoulders, his face, shaking just as bad as he and rough with worry, and Jim leaned into the touch, body breaking apart for the first time in months._

_“Christ! James, I’m here! Daddy’s here, Daddy’s got you!”_

_He was pulled into a lap then, all sharp bone and cutting angles, and the young boy curled into the blistering warmth of his father with a reverence that shook him clean through. He wasn’t prepared for this, not any of it, but this was safe, this was home and that was good enough. Yet, he tried to crawl away, twisted on hand and knee and reached out into the darkness from which he had just come._

_They emerged from the shadows in sharp featured forms, starved nearly to death and bloated from hunger in the belly like a toxic balloon within the abdomen. Al-Halelmas had risen then, held his sister against him where her legs had given out, or perhaps she held him, and Cynthia, black eyed and starving, the young Betazoid held onto Kevin for him, a bundle in her arms while Thomas streaked forward into his arms. Collapsing around in a huddle, he could hear his Dad swear under his breath even as Jim took Thomas, took Kevin, and cradled the two just as close as he was cradled._

_“Fuck, fuck, Jesus Chri-Nogura! Nogura, I need medical now!”_

_And everything became a blur, with his father bundling the nine young survivors onto the ship, and as the transporter landed them on the familiar bay of the Yorktown, Oshavi began to seize and shake. Mournful sound bubbling in his throat, Jim watched as Cynthia fell beside the half-Klingon boy, tried to hold him close while keeping his head still, only to be batted away by medical._

_Screaming once more then, shrill and wailing as the lights and people became too much for her. Yet Jim was silent, sobbing gone and his dad standing strong over him. Instead, Jim continued to sit, with Thomas and Kevin caught within the sharp bony cage of his arms and legs, the only protection he could offer the two small children. He bared his teeth at the nurse who tried to come forward, snapped at the fingers in his hair that didn’t belong to his father, and watched the way that the woman recoiled from him as if burned._

_The twins had fallen onto one another in a tangled heap on the floor, with limbs that refused to be moved and something warrior fierce on Al-Halelmas’ dark face. His sister’s head was ducked against his throat, her cries quiet, but Jim could hear her chanting all the same, and his own grip tightened on his two children. Good.  Let the nurse be scared of him.  Let her be frightened and fretful, for he was vengeance and death; he had sold himself for these children time and time again for water or food._

_A blonde woman swayed forward then, slow in her step but strong, and no matter how hard he snarled, she took another step closer and closer until his rigid bones ached. He could hold himself no tighter, could curl no lower over his two children, and she lay the warm, soft blanket over them with a gentle touch and a whisper of fingers across his forehead._

_“Carol-“_

_“They need it and don’t you ‘Carol’ me.”_

_The man behind her was tall, shoulders almost too big for his arms and his golden eyes wide, and Jim gave him a glance before turning his attention instead to the way that Thomas had pulled at the blanket to take it tighter to them, and how Kevin had started to whimper. He wanted to lean into his Dad’s legs, wanted to close his eyes and cry, but there was something more important than that._

_“Carol, Len, see if you can talk to the twins, would you? Chris, I can look at young Jim.”_

_“Mark, I’m not sure wha-“_

_Breath a loud wheeze, he turned brilliant blue eyes onto his father then, the two forgotten, and watched as Chris dropped to his knees without hesitation. Careful fingers adjusted the blanket, and it was almost easy to ignore the tricorder waving over his skin._

_“Kodos is still ‘live.”_

_Chris clenched his jaw at Jim’s words and the vein along his temple stood out in sharp relief. Nodding, the man pressed a kiss first to Jim’s forehead, then to the two children that he held, and there was a dangerous light to his eyes. The fierceness of it carried to his voice, held fast, and the man bounced back to his feet then, with a vengeful sort of purpose on his shoulders._

_“Mark, keep me updated. Nogura, get a security team, now, and have Hoshi set scanners on the planet again. We’re going on a man hunt.”_

_“Of course, sir.”_

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm being naughty, and posting this technically without my beta's approval, because she's gone to bed by now, and I'll be going that way here in a few moments myself. But, I got this chapter done, and really wanted to share it, so I just couldn't resist it! Tell me what you think, I promise I'll respond!

When he woke, the bed was empty and he was so very, very alone.

Curling on his side, stomach churning, there was a sticky-tack quality to the skin of his face, and Jim rubbed his knuckles across his eyes until starbursts appeared, before dragging his hands down his cheeks and jaw. A blanket was coiled tight around him, one of the Afghans that Amanda had made, and his body was hot within the cocoon of soft sand reds and oranges. The Vulcan sun enveloped him, but strange, this particular blanket never left its home in the living room, and he didn’t understand how it had found its way to his bed.

Scrubbing his fingers through his hair then, slowly, Jim sat up with a wince at the tightness in his shoulders and a refusal to look at the empty bed all around him. Instead, he stared at his lap, fingers molding together into a tangled, white-tipped knot, and slowly pulled his bottom lip between his teeth. Worrying the flesh, he couldn’t hold the burning in his eyes, nor the acidic pain in his throat that normally promised tears. They threatened to streak down his cheeks, and when he took a deep breath they broke free in rivulets, rushing down the flushed skin of his face to drip to his hands.

_“Fuck.”_

He swore quietly, twisting within the blanket until he could slip from his bed, and only then did he hear them.

Whispers, quiet but coming from down the hall, the voices of his children and something deeper. And yet, while he recognized them, Thomas and Kevin and a man, probably his father, the whispering alone put him on edge, more than waking to an empty bed, and Jim nearly fell to his knees in a defensive crouch from where he stood. Only discipline kept him upright and he pressed to the wall, eased the door open with slow fingers, mindful of the way it would creak otherwise from the pressure.  
Whispering, whispering, soft voices that carried quietly from the living room, and he tilted his head to hear them, but couldn’t make out the things that were said. On slow feet he slunk out of the room, crept into the hall to slip against the wall, low where he finally fell into a crouch. Defensive, already, and he had just woken up from his much needed slumber, with his face still sticky from fresh tears that he hadn’t cleaned away.

Jim kept close to the wall as he moved, fingertips trailing the floor, contorted to hide and to give himself the chance to spring should he need it.

“-allergic to that, Kevy, I don’t think your Daddy would much like me feeding you strawberries.”

Bones.

It was just Bones.

The man hadn’t left at all after their intimate encounter, he hadn’t walked away, hadn’t decided that Jim was too much for him and, suddenly, Jim felt stupid. He was shamed, overwhelmed; he had fooled himself, overanalyzed the situation until he had made himself feel sick. What sort of potential lover was he, to underestimate his possible partner in such a way? To think that Bones would leave him, when the man had proved himself to be nothing if not steadfast, and for an almost-lover who was horrified by a sexual touch, for Christ’s sake.

Standing slowly, Jim sighed, rubbed his hands over his face with dragging motions and turned on his heel to retreat into the hall once more. Walking back the way he had come, the bathroom lights flickered to life when he entered the little room, and he flinched with a squinting blink and another sigh as he turned the water on.

Sure enough, his face in the mirror was flushed and ruddy from crying, with creases along his temple and cheek from where his pillowcase had folded against his face.

Scrubbing his hands a little harder over his skin until his knuckles ached and left red, fleeting traces in their wake, he felt the way that the air in the apartment shifted. Heard the voices of his sons rise at the sound of the water turning on in the bathroom, knew he had been discovered by at least one of them. Cupping his hands beneath the stream, Jim splashed it over his face once, twice, before bracing himself on the sink’s edge with heavy hands and letting his head hang low against the sharpness of his clavicle.

Cold water speckled up against his knuckles, and then freckle splattered fingers wrapped around one of his thighs, holding tight to him. Grinning, needing the contact more than he was willing to admit to, Jim tilted his head to look at Kevin where he stood half-hidden. The boy clung to him, full bodied, with a grin that was pressed into his thigh and fingers that dug into his skin. Shifting his weight, Jim felt little feet press onto the top of one of his own. He shifted again, leaned slowly so that Kevin could grapple on as tight as he needed, and felt the little boy hold him close.

"Da-addy."

"Wha-at."

He drew the vowel out much in the same way that Kevin had, and felt small fingers knot around the inside of his thigh. He ambled the two of them out of the bathroom and into the hall, felt the way that Kevin clung with all his might to him, and supported his son with a hand on the back of his head. Toddling a little more, sweeping them down the hall, Jim caught sight of Thomas' dirty footprints left in the entryway.

"Can we keep him?"

Footprints, but no Thomas, and yet there was squealing laughter that rang through the apartment. Waddling, the two of them rounded the corner and wandered into the living room, and Jim caught sight of Thomas upside down in the air, hooked over Bones' shoulder. The little boy grinned, sloppy and lopsided, with his hands fisted in the man’s cream turtleneck and a large cardigan hanging off of his own little arms, rolled up past the wrists. The argyle pattern of it was familiar, intimately so, and he felt a grin pull at his lips at the sight. Thomas waved at them, hair falling down from his forehead in an abstract crown, and pulled a little tighter on Bones' shirt until he could hoist himself to sit on one broad shoulder.

"Again, again!" he squealed, and the resulting boom of dry laughter that followed was brilliant and bright.

"Yeah," Jim breathed, threading his fingers through soft ginger curls and staring at the scene of Bones spinning the two around in tight circles, with something aching tender and warm in his chest. "We can keep him."

-

His body hurt.

Everything had a harsh, hard ache to it, and he felt a tight pain run along the curve of his ribs, the line of his cheek. Nothing was good, everything ached with a fierce kind of throbbing, and he felt it in the pulse of something wet and hot along the side of his face. Something had gone wrong; something wasn't right with the world that he knew, and he twisted his head in the darkness, tried to rub at his face.

His fingers were stuck though, hands bound tight, and there was something horribly wrong.

Tugging, turning, there was something solid beneath him, something that grated against his skin, and he pressed against it, turned his head to catch sight of whatever it was that bound his wrists. Cuffs, archaic and glinting in the dim light of the room. It slanted through a window that he could barely see, and the light that came through was that of a dim, golden, afternoon haze.

There were cuffs, around his wrists, and something was wrong, everything was wrong.

Tugging once more, twisting and trying to arch his body off the structure that he was bound against, Jim grunted quietly. Through the pounding in his head he couldn't quite figure out just what had happened. Someone had gotten him, and he felt sick to his stomach with bile and another dark, swirling feeling that was all too familiar against the backdrop of memories that he wished so desperately to keep at bay.

He was cuffed to what felt like a bed, and he was almost tempted to cry then, at the chilling familiarity of the entire scene, as the memories of the scent of burning flesh and Kodos’ laugh started to play through his mind, and while his memories of his recent encounter began to emerge- the hands on his mouth and the way he could still hear the panic in his son’s voice

-

_"I won't be gone long, Kevy, you're the one that wanted chicken nuggets for dinner, remember?"_

_He spoke into the Comm that he held between fingers, felt the way that it weighed in his hand. The metal was cool, ever cool against his skin, and he hummed into it, heard the sputtering sounds of his son on the other side. Displeasure was familiar on the boy’s voice, something that he had grown accustomed to hearing, and Jim chuckled at the sound of it._

_“But Daddy-”_

_“Ah, nope. What’s rule number two?”_

_There was heavy silence on the other side of the line, until Kevin mumbled something that he couldn’t quite catch. He knew the boy well though, far too well to let that sort of avoidance slide completely, and he shook his head even though there was no one around to see it._

_It was supposed to have been a quick trip down the street and round the corner; taking just enough time to get to the store that catered to Jim’s allergies, without question or complaint, and he’d promised not to be gone more than ten minutes. Still, unsatisfied, Kevin had pestered Bones, insisted on checking on Jim until the man had nearly given Jim a heart attack, by calling his private Comm and making him fear the worst. Nothing had happened though, nothing had gone amiss and, instead, the boys had just wanted to whinge and whine some more to try and get their way._

_“No takies backies.”_

_Nodding, Jim sighed, flicking a glance at his shopping basket, and then at the ice cream that he knew the boys would want. Worse than succumbing to their childish pleading, it was something that they hadn’t even asked for, just a treat that he knew they would enjoy if he brought it home and that was the beauty of it, wasn’t it? Surprising them with little things, the things that they wouldn’t expect from him, just because he could and because he cared._

_Caving, Jim turned around toward the cash register, already digging his credit chit out of his wallet. The attendant waved at him, familiar from the chestnut and fire tipped strands of her hair to the upturn of her nose, and he waggled his free fingers at her in response. Dropping his basket of items down on the counter then, big boxes of chicken nuggets and popsicles, he swept both through the counter before scanning his chit, not bothering to look at the total. A quick slide of motion to put the chit back in his wallet, wallet in his pocket and his items in the bag, and then he was out of the store accompanied by the chiming of synthetic bells._

_“Give me a few more minutes, Kevy, and then I’ll be home okay?”_

_There was an uptick to the boy's breathing, a hitch that would have been worrying any other time, and he could hear Thomas panting at his brother's shoulder. He thanked Bones for humoring the both of them, silently, and picked up his pace a little bit, if only to get home that much sooner._

_“Promise?”_

_Thomas, with his high voice crackling a little as his brother no doubt shouldered him in the throat._

_Jim grinned, a soft, lovestruck curl of his lips at the antics of his boys, and cast a glance both ways before crossing swiftly over the street. Home was only a few steps and flights of stairs away and, already, he could see the lights from the apartment, gleaming from behind the curtains that Sasiss had tried to claim first, only to be denied by her own credit chit._

_“Promise. See, I’m right at the sta-”_

_Someone grappled him, and the Comm unit crashed to the ground with a loud clatter. His bag followed suit, and something wrapped over his mouth, tight. Fingers, pulling at his cheek and jaw, twisting his face in the opposite angle from where he had been looking, and that was his own voice, grunting out from beneath the hold, his feet kicking at the ground. That was a hypo, sinking into the meaty skin between his throat and shoulder, and that was the world slipping suddenly sideways, the darkness of the night air spinning all around him._

_“Daddy?”_

-

Gasping quietly, Jim twisted harder against his bonds, felt the metal of the cuffs dig cold and sharp into the delicate skin of his wrists. They cut then, ached something fierce, and when he chanced a glance, he had torn through the thin flesh, the skin gleaming wet and red in the dim lighting. He tugged again though, twisted his thumb until it threatened to pop, and tried to pull himself free. Worse, it only made things worse though, and he shouldn’t have done that at all. Pain ricocheted up his arm in a sharp pulse, and he swore.

“ _Fuck_!”

His voice echoed all around him in a loud crush of noise. He winced, tilted his head away from the sound and went slack against the bed. A bed, of all the things to be bound to, sending a spiral of memory and phantasmal fingers across his skin, and already he was going to be sick. There was the phantom sensation of fingers on his skin, pulling at him and pressing into him, and Jim turned his head, pressed his mouth into the meat of his bicep and heaved through his teeth.

He was alone, he reminded himself, with the touch of hysteria already settling in his mind, alone and safe in his loneliness. There was a metallic taste in the back of his throat, tears in his eyes, and Jim forced himself to breathe, to take drag after drag of air from between his teeth. Spots coiled through his vision, and he shut his eyes tight until those burning tears squeezed their way free. One breath after another and, slowly, the heavy ache in his chest pressed a little less; the pain within his throat ached a little less.

He’d been taken then, taken nearly from his home, from the stairwell right before he was safe. He was supposed to be safe, Kodos was dead, and nobody had reported any problems or knew the locations of the nine survivors, scattered across the galaxies as they were. This wasn’t a Tarsus related problem then, this was something else, something personal.

But, from Hikaru in philosophy to Chekov, Scotty and Gaila in his technical mathematical courses last semester, he couldn’t think of a single person he had angered so excessively.

Kevin and Thomas would be beside themselves, he thought, with a touch of panic swirling around in his brain. The two of them would be nothing but tears and fear, and he ached for them as much as he ached for himself. As much as everything still hurt, his poor babies wouldn’t know what had happened to him and, for all he knew, his Comm was still on the ground outside the apartment.

_Bones._

_Bones_ had been there. Bones had been at his apartment and with his children, while Jim had run to the store down the block. Bones would be worried, fretful and beside himself, and all of these thoughts of their fear did nothing for his own.

Distantly, he knew that reminding himself of hands upon his flesh, of the hunger in his belly and the fear inside his mind would do nothing good, would only make the situation worse. Carefully, with his heartbeat pounding in his ears and his head pulsing, he took a deep breath, then another. His teeth ached, his jaw hurt, and there was a tightness, on one side of his ribs where everything burned, bright and fierce. Deep breaths did nothing helpful, only made things worse, but he took more of them, all the same. He would be fine, so long as he kept breathing, just as long as he stayed relaxed he would be perfectly fine…

A door that he hadn’t noticed in his panic swished open, mechanical and sounding new, and the way he had relaxed was now nothing more than a lie. The phantom fingers on his skin solidified then, stroking motions from fingers that seemed tense with barely controlled ferocity, that caught him first by his jaw, then twisted carefully until Jim was facing the direction those fingers wanted.

Careless, sharp fingers pressed at his ribs, digging at the aching flesh and bone, and his breath was a hiss, sounding harsh through the clutch of his teeth.

A tsking sound filled the air then, and the voice that spoke was deep, smooth.

“I forget my own strength at the worst of times, I always do.”

A sigh touched his ear, and then he felt those fingers on his face once more, turning him this way and that as they inspected him. He knew his captor was male, from the cadence of his voice, and the depth of his tone was crisp, lilting, with a smooth accent that Jim couldn’t quite place.

“Now, now. Won’t you look at me? I’ve come a long way just to see those eyes.”

Fingers squeezed at his jaw then, pressure growing until it gave way, and his eyes opened as he let out a rattling gasp. Above him a man stood, dark hair coiffed near perfectly and the cut of his jaw highlighted in the dimness while his cheekbones looked ready to cut through the flesh that stretched across them. He had sharp, white razors for teeth, and colorful aquamarine and emerald galaxies for eyes, the universes spiraling away in the man’s irises until Jim couldn’t tell where one color started and the other ended.

“Hello, _Georgie_.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is the end, my darlings. The ship has sailed, the curtain has closed, and this fic has reached its last chapter. I'm sorry this took me so long to post, I wanted to get it just right before I gave it to all of you. I hope you enjoy it, and I want to thank everybody for the absolutely wonderful comments I've received throughout this adventure!

_Georgie._

Fingertips digging into his flesh, and the man called him _Georgie_ , a brash, crude diminutive of George, and stared at him as if Jim should answer to the name. The crazed, glazed light to his eyes made more sense now, and Jim mentally floundered even while he lay prone. The struggle seeped from his bones, slowly, and Jim was left to stare at the sharp-cheeked man, looking for an answer that he feared he wouldn’t find.

Georgie, _George_ , of all the damn names, and the hysterical part of him wanted to laugh at the notion of it, damn the consequences.

This man was insane, surely, with no idea what year it was or who it was he held captive in his hands, and Jim wanted to cry almost as much as he wanted to laugh. The motion and sound would do him no good though, nothing safe would come from laughter at a time like this, and instead he bit at the inside of his cheek, kept his face blank. So he wanted to be seen, then fine, Jim would watch, Jim would see, this wasn’t the first time he had dealt with someone so demented, but he could only hope it would be the last. At least his sons weren’t here to see him like this, not this time around.

Small miracles, and wasn’t that such a strange thing to think, when he didn’t believe in some higher power, didn’t find comfort in the thought of _God_ , of all things, like some omnipresent, omnipotent, benevolent being could possibly save him now. No, _science_ would save him, science and man and his own damn wit, just like it had last time, and every other time in his life when something had gone horribly, irrevocably wrong.

His captor ran his tongue along his teeth, obvious enough for Jim to see, and he watched every movement made with rapt attention but with as flat of an expression as he could manage. ‘Never give them what they wanted, never give them a fucking inch’, such a horrible thing to know, but it was a lesson he had learned well those terrible three years ago. Months of staring at guards with a deadened look in his eyes, months of snarling teeth and flat lips when they asked him questions that he refused to answer, when they forced things upon his body that he didn’t want.

He was stronger than that though, had been stronger than them, and he was stronger than this man too.

“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to see those eyes, do you?”

Those fingers caressed his jaw once more, and Jim fought the urge to flinch. His skin burned where he had been touched, and he wanted to curl away from those fingertips and stinging nails, but no, no that would be what the man wanted. That sort of reaction wouldn’t do, not in the slightest, not in the least. He needed to be steady, he needed to be strong, his babies needed him and Bones was expecting him.

So Jim stared back at those swirling green and blue galaxies watching him, gave a dead look in response to the soft touches and the rumbled words that he received, and wondered how long it would take until this man, this beast, lost interest. He could stay strong long enough, he could last however long it took.

He had survived before and he would do it again.

“Twenty years, Georgie, and look…  you haven’t aged at all.”

Those fingers slipped down his throat to his clavicle, his chest, and Jim felt bare beneath them in the worst of ways. Just hours ago, he had been pressed against the man who would be his lover, had felt a fire boiling in his blood and something hot and consuming beneath his skin. Now though, with this man upon him, touching his abdomen like a lover touched familiar skin, Jim felt cold and vile, felt like he would be ill.

“And you don’t even recognize me, do you?”

Those fingers twisted, grabbed a fistful of the soft flesh and wiry hair at his navel. Body seizing, he arched slightly into the bed, and felt the cold cuffs bite into his wrists once more. The man had moved above him, twisted so that one knee dipped on the bed, pressed hard and close to Jim’s exposed ribs where they ached, and he wanted to cry out. But he kept his mouth shut, held his breath, and remained silent, all until nails dug into his skin and pulled blood, wet and welling to the surface.

“It’s _Khan_ , Georgie. Surely, you must remember me?”

He couldn’t contain himself then, spat at the man through curled lips and clenched teeth.

“That’s not my _name_.”

The man, this _Khan_ , tilted his head and for a moment the cutting pressure on his abdomen gentled, softened. Long enough for Jim to breathe, to catch his breath and realign himself once more, to feel shame and anger for the way that he had let himself react. He had given the man what he wanted, recognition if nothing else, and Jim cursed his own stupidity even as he squirmed quietly on the bed.

“No, I suppose it isn’t, is it?”

That cupid’s bow curled into a sharp, sinister smile, and Khan stared down at him with a burning intensity in his gaze.  Jim wanted to curl in on himself more so now than ever, wanted to slip away from that bright look and those blistering eyes, but he couldn’t move any further than he already had on the bed. His wrists ached, bloody and raw, and the mantra of panic that had settled in his brain had yet to quiet.

“No, no, but you Kirk men always have those same eyes, no matter if it’s you, or your father.”

 _He knew_.

Khan _knew_ that he wasn’t George, knew damn well just who he was. There was no mistaking the knowing in those eyes, no mistake to the understanding there, just as there was no way to deny the fact that those fingers had crept lower still, had begun to grope and fondle him, flaccid as he was, through the fabric of his pants. Jim winced, twisted his head away and turned his mouth into the meat of his arm just to hide his teeth.

But Khan still watched him, still grinned at him.

“My Georgie died with the _Kelvin_ thanks to that fucking Romulan. But you’ll do, James.”

Those fingers squeezed him, and the sound that spilled from his lips was broken, wounded, sharp with the sudden pain and his hips jerked on the bed, tried to chase the feeling just to stop the painful pressure that wouldn’t give. He hadn’t thought it possible, but through eyes filling with tears, Jim watched as Khan’s grin became broader still, as something savage and cruel curled on that striking, sharp face.

“Oh yes, you’ll do quite nicely.”

-

_He had never met a half-Klingon before Oshavi, had never known a Betazoid other than Olive in his entire life. Cynthia was a strange girl, hungry and near feral, and the twins- he had never known El-Aurian’s before the two of them had grinned at him in class. He had met more aliens on Tarsus than he had ever personally even seen in San Francisco, where his world consisted of his father, his father’s friends and a strange, rag-tag Vulcan family in the Embassy._

_The infirmary was brightly lit and, outside the door of their private room, Jim could see that the lights were still just as bright. The tinted windows did little to shield his eyes, and he watched them flicker in the main room with rapt attention as Kevin leaned heavily against his side. On his other side, Thomas had taken it upon himself to pick at the small, diced pieces of banana that had been given to him. Al-Halelmas had decided to feed his sister before feeding himself and Atimeh-Yna had nearly fallen asleep between each slow, careful spoonful of applesauce. She dozed now, curled up on her side on the biobed that the two shared, with one hunger-thin arm loose over the edge and her brother’s fingers tracing over her the tender curve of her skull where her curls had begun to grow back._

_A piece of butterless, dry toast sat before Jim, gluten free and no doubt tasteless, waiting for him to devour it. But he wouldn’t, not until all of them ate. Al-Halelmas had already started to feed himself now, and Cynthia had eaten a good portion of her bowl of rice without much prompting, Kevin an entire banana and at least a half of another._

_Only Oshavi didn’t eat._

_The boy had come to after his seizure, albeit slowly, but his speech had been slurred since then. The Betazoid girl had been able to draw slow, stammering sentences from him but not much else, and every time the nurses came through to check on them, Jim recognized something crumpled and sad on their faces._

_They didn’t think Oshavi would make it._

_The thought made his insides coil into something tight and sick, but he was too tired to cry, too tired to be fearful and fretful over something as common as another death.  Another, when they were supposed to be safe now, when they were supposed to be able to be free from all the hunger and the smoke, the ash on their hands. They’d been given sonic showers and actual, clean water to drink, even though it was restricted and they were told to be careful and slow, because there was more than enough water for everyone on the ship._

_But Oshavi wouldn’t eat._

_“Avi, please.”_

_The voice was Cynthia’s, begging quietly, a bowl of plain rice in her hands and a spoon with a few grains of it on the cool metal. She was weak, and her hand shook trying to hold the utensil still, and her smooth face was imploring. Her hair was scarlet, and a lush wave had overtaken it from the shower. Those were freckles on her hungry cheeks, not dirt or blood, and her black eyes looked wet with tears and something like desperation only more fierce, more animal._

_The Halfling only grunted though, the main sound that he had been able to manage without much struggle, and Jim watched as he turned his head away from the spoon._

_“_ Avi _.”_

_She begged the boy that Jim had seen her hold the hand of countless times, and there were tears on her pretty, clean cheeks._

_Stroking his fingers through Kevin’s hair, the boy slept soundly, with a faint wheeze to his breath.  Jim had heard the word ‘orphan’ enough times to know what would happen to his babies, and he refused to let such a fate become them. They were too small, too sweet, and he wouldn’t watch them be left to the state as he himself had nearly been,_ would _have been if Chris hadn’t come forward like he had._

 _“Oshavi, you’ll_ die _if you don’t eat.”_

_“Let him.”_

_His words were callus, and rang out in the quiet of the room, where nothing but Cynthia’s voice and the quiet hum of biobeds broke the silence. Those awake and aware looked at him with varying expressions; Al-Halelmas resigned and Cynthia startled. Thomas continued to eat, blissfully unaware, or at least choosing to be, and Oshavi- the Halfling - stared at him with wary, spiteful eyes, and Jim understood that look as well._

_He felt so fucking old._

_-_

“Open up like a good boy, James.  Ah, none of that.  Don’t you bite or I’ll take those teeth. Good, very good, take it all now.”

_-_

_“Jimmy, you can’t mean tha-“_

_“Let him die, Cynthia, that’s what he wants. Isn’t it, Oshavi?”_

_Slowly, the boy sat up, stared at Jim with open contempt and bared teeth, and he recognized that expression from how it had felt on his own face, as he had given it to guards countless times while they took and took and took things that didn’t belong to them._

_“Shut up, Kirk.”_

_Guttural Klingon spilled from the boy’s lips, the last bit of his family and culture that he had to hold. He was angry and he was hurt, and Jim understood those words from his own restless knowledge, years prior, engaging with the terminal in their San Francisco living room._

_“This is what you want, isn’t it? To die?”_

_Cold-voiced and harsh, Jim stared unkindly at the other boy even as sympathy curled in his gut. He wouldn’t do it if he didn’t want to, not if he thought dying was the only thing left, and Jim ached for his friend. To feel so alone in the universe, to become so hateful and cruel because of it, he only hoped that Cynthia was enough._

_“Then do it Oshavi, die. Curl up and fucking die like some pathetic rat, because that’s what you’ll be.”_

_Cynthia had dropped the bowl of rice to the bed, instead cupping both hands over her mouth. Her thin shoulders shook, hiccupping sounds spilling quietly from between her fingers, and those were tears. He had made her cry._

_“Shut_ up _, Kirk.”_

 _“_ Make _me, Gannik_.”

_The Halfling snarled, tried to push himself up on the biobed, only to falter and fall. Jim pressed his lips into a sharp, cruel smile, and clucked his teeth even as he pulled Thomas just a little closer to him. The boy had finished his banana, and had taken to eating the part that Kevin had left untouched. Good, he would need his strength, and Jim was determined to make sure his boys never felt hunger again._

_“You can’t, can you? Where’s your honor now, Oshavi, or are you not worthy of the clan name Gannik? I don’t see a Klingon before me.  I see a child, petulant and small. You are nothing, and I’m sure your ancestors are ashamed of you. Think of how your parents would feel, Gannik, your brothers and sister, knowing that you want to die.”_

_A roar filled the room, animalistic and rattling, and the bowl of rice was thrown at Jim and his charges. His used his own body to protectthem, quickly twisting so that he shielded the two boys with limbs that ached and knees that burned. Kevin began to wail at the sudden shift in position, and Thomas stared at him with wide, wild brown eyes that quickly brimmed with tears._

_“You know not of what you speak, Kirk!”_

_The impact had hurt, the bowl harsh against his skin. Jim could still feel the impact of it, could still hear the clatter ringing in his ears, and Atimeh-Yna was awake now. Furthermore, Cynthia had begun to sob, her cries muffled by the fist stuffed into her mouth and the wailing that came from Kevin. Thomas pulled the little one close, pressed fingers to his lips to try and stifle the sound, and there was a stricken, fearful expression on his little face. They were still scared of death, all of them, and Jim felt his skin crawl just by having his back to the door._

_“Then eat and prove me wrong, or are you a coward?”_

_The enraged heaving that he heard from behind him slowly became something else, something softer, and slowly, Jim turned his head to find the other boy crying. The twelve-year-old blubbered quietly, fists pressed his eyes and his ridged forehead crumpled harshly. As if he were a wounded animal, Jim approached the other, and felt it when the boy collapsed into him with a quivering frame and the first tears Jim had ever seen him shed since they had come to know each other. He wrapped thin arms around the tall boy, though, held him close while Atimeh-Yna got up to stop the crying of Kevin and Thomas, and Jim pressed his head to Oshavi’s shoulder, taking as much comfort as he gave._

_From the corner of his eye though, he saw movement, and Jim turned his head to find Chris standing in the doorway. There was fresh blood on his shirt and on his arms, still gleaming wet, and Jim swallowed thickly, felt the carnal beast inside of himself settle at the sight. They were safe.  His Dad had made sure of that._

_Kodos was dead._

_-_

There was the smell of burning in the air, something hot and ferocious. He knew it instantly, from memory alone: the smell of burning flesh wasn’t something so easily forgotten. There was no mistaking it, and Jim would have cried had he not felt so numb. There was ash in his mouth, his eyes, in a haze of memory that he had no way to fight, and there were hands on his face, drawing a flinch from his skin.

He screamed, a guttural, feral sound that bore from the depths of his chest, and the sound was wounded even to his own ears. There was nowhere to thrash though, for his muscles ached and his body burned in a way that was all too familiar. It made him want to cry, to gag, and Jim went with the latter in a gut wrenching heave.

“Hey, hey buddy, you’re safe now.”

That wasn’t Khan speaking to him, the voice was all wrong. Those fingers upon his skin didn’t threaten to tear or bruise his flesh, didn’t grapple and grip at him with damaging force, and Jim knew that voice.

Familiar blue eyes stared down at him, and fingers worked carefully at the cuffs on his wrists. There was a primal sort of chanting, a heavy, heaving sound in the distance, something that he recognized through the white noise that had settled between his ears. His jaw ached, and his body hurt in a familiar, painful sort of way that Jim had wished he would never have to know again, and he wanted nothing more than to sob.

“ _Daddy_.”

Chris gave him a watery smile, and carefully eased Jim’s arms down until they could rest tense at his sides. The burning rushed through them in pins and needles, daggers and nails, as the blood returned to the skin after an unknown amount of time, and Jim began to cry anew. He didn’t know when he had stopped crying, when his body had gone numb, but the sight of his father brought all of it back once more, and he felt like a wounded child as he began to sob.

“Shh…  Daddy’s here Jimmy, Daddy’s right here.”

Careful fingers pet at his hair, and it was only then that Jim realized he was naked. His legs tried to curl up, but the action hurt, and his crying grew harder. Chris’ expression tightened around the edges, something harsh and hot curling in the vein at his temple and the corner of his eyes, but that same smile stayed on his lips. It was a comfort, at least.

“’appen-happened?”

Fingers soothed along his skin, ruffled carefully through his sweat soaked bangs, and that was ash, falling onto his skin. It burned where it touched despite the way it had already cooled, and he didn’t want to know what that was, and yet, part of him was sure he already knew.

“Khan’s dead. We found you through the tracking device I put in your Comm, and it- I’m sorry it took us so long to get here.”  That was the ash on his skin then, the taste of it in his mouth. Glancing, he could see the phaser rifle at his father’s side, and knew that it had been used. He was surrounded in ash though, fairly covered in it, and the notion of it made him all the more nauseous. “I didn’t think to get him off you before I fired, I’m so sorry Jimmy. I just-I just-“

“Dad, i-it’s okay.”

“Just relax, okay Jimmy? Go back to sleep, Daddy needs to stop Spock from killing a man.”

-

The biobed beneath him was comfortable, soft.

The lights had been dimmed, and a warm blanket had been thrown carefully over him, tucked in at some point, no doubt, but it had been pushed down from where he had moved, restless in his sleep. Nothing ached, nothing hurt, not his ribs nor his cheek, not inside or out, and Jim couldn’t help but wonder if it was from the good kind of drugs, or if he had been asleep long enough for regenerators to do all the work that they needed to.

There was warmth, curled against his chest, and one pair of feet pressed to his thighs while another pressed to his knees, all tiny toes and small soles. Both boys had taken up residence with him on the bed, then, and from the slow, synchronized rise and fall of their chests, he could only surmise that they were asleep, just as he himself had been.

What had woken him became apparent then, as a thumb made another passing stroke over the back of his hand and, slowly, Jim opened his eyes.

There was a tired weight in the line of Bones’ shoulders, anchoring him down where the man had fallen into an uncomfortable slumber upon the hospital chair. His face was haggard and tight, anxious lines ran along his mouth, below the frowning furrow between his brows. Circles beneath his eyes took the appearance of dark, blooming bruises, and the skin of his bottom lip had been bitten repeatedly, until it had grown bloody from the chewing- Jim didn’t think he had ever seen the older man look so beaten down and distressed. The thumb moved again, as though it was caught in a pattern, while Bones slept on…

“Hi.”

Jim whispered the word, and then honeyed, golden-hazel eyes opened and stared back at him. Bones grunted, shuffled forward a little further in his chair, and his smile looked like it hurt, wide and wounded as it was. Jim was certain that the one he gave in response looked just as caged though, just as scared.

“Hey, darlin’.”

 He hummed quietly at the endearment, and watched the way that Bones bent forward, dusted a kiss across his knuckles. His wrists were clean, not a single cut or scar in sight, and Jim was thankful for it, didn’t think he would have been able to handle the reminder.

“You watch me sleep this whole time?”

Bones nodded, reached out with his free hand and ruffled Thomas’ hair when the boy started to stir. The child just snuffled though, and pressed a little closer to Kevin, pressing his brother tighter into the curve of Jim’s chest until the two of them could come no closer. There was nowhere left for the two of them to go, and he shifted where he lay to accommodate the both of them.

“Learn anything?”

Jim croaked the words out through a sleep thick throat, and watched as Bones gave him a faint smile in response.

To have a conversation that felt so normal was strange, but cathartic all at the same time. He didn’t have to worry with Bones, didn’t have to fear that the man would treat him any differently. He was still Jim, still the same boy that he had been just days before. Bones wouldn’t think any less of him for how he had been held and violated.

This time, it was Bones turn to hum, a low, long sound that seemed to come from the depth of his chest. His thumb soothed a path across Jim’s hand, and he dusted another kiss across his knuckles before sighing.

“I love you.”

 _Oh_.

He hadn’t been prepared for that sort of response, and his chest felt light in answer to it. He couldn’t help his grin, or the heat in his cheeks, and he curled a little closer to the other man, pressing against his children where they lay on the bed. He twisted their hands together and held on tight.

“I love you.”

His voice was soft, quiet even, and Jim watched as another grin broke out over Bones’ face. He edged their entwined hands to his own face, and dusted a kiss along the back of Bones’ knuckles, sweeping his lips across the tattoos there. Moving slowly, he cradled that hand in both of his, mindful of the weight of his children between them, and pressed another kiss to Bones’ fingertips.

That breathless feeling in his chest hadn’t faded, not yet at least, and Jim held onto it with all he had, felt the way that his heart pounded in his chest. From the hall outside of his room, he could hear quiet muttering, _Vulcan_ but…  Nyota’s crisp, perfect syntax rose above the more mellowed, measured tones of Spock and other male voices.  He looked questioningly at Bones, through slanted eyes.

Bones shook his head though, and his breath was quiet, nearly sad as he inhaled, then exhaled heavily. His grin fell just as quickly as it had come, and Jim felt his chest tighten.

“You don’t mean that, Jim. You’ve-God darlin’, you’ve been through so much, I don’t expect you to know what you feel right no-“

“Leonard, shut up.”

Voice a harsh whisper, Jim took care to keep his voice level, lest he wake his slumbering children. Bones blinked at him, golden eyes wide and his mouth gaping just the slightest. Good, Jim decided then, let him be startled, for Jim was fierce, and his voice was firm. His grip tightened on Bones hand, and with his mouth still pressed to his knuckles, Jim bared his teeth against the skin, nearly threatening.

“I love you.”

“You sure, darlin’?”

Bones voice was soft, words carefully selected and spoken, as if the hush that had fallen over him was a sacred thing. There was a hopeful light to his eyes, something nearly childlike and filled with wonder, and Jim wanted to hold him then. He wanted to wrap the other man in his arms, hold him like Jim himself ached to be held, and yet his children between them stopped him. So he smiled softly, pressed another kiss to Bones’ knuckles.

“I’ve loved you since you called me beautiful, I just-I didn’t know what the name for it was.”

His smile was brilliant, blinding and bright, and Jim clung to it with everything that he had. There was nothing sweeter, nothing he wanted more, and he burrowed into the warmth that had taken root within his chest, content to bask and hold Bones’ hand.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”


End file.
